Carlo Piana :: Law is Freedom ::

With today's press release, FSFE cheers the advent of the browser choice ballot screen, a facility that would notify users that Freedom is within reach. Windows (TM) users will be presented with a graphic interface within MS Internet Explorer whereby they can choose to install an additional web browser, including the most successful and innovative Free Software one, Mozilla Firefox. 

Sometimes I wonder who the worst enemies of Free Software are. And it occurs me that sometimes the worst enemies are ourselves, the proponents of it (or self-described as such).

The same thought struck me yesterday reading a press release calling for Mysql to be sold to a third party, separate from the prospect buyer of Sun Microsystem, Oracle. It says:

[Monty Widenius] believes the EU's antitrust regulator is "absolutely right to be concerned" and called on Oracle "to be constructive and commit to sell MySQL to a suitable third party, enabling an instant solution instead of letting Sun suffer much longer.

Patron the Freedom Task Force of the FSFE, yesterday a new review, the International Free and Open Source Law Review, or IFOSS L. Rev, has been announced and published.

It is a "peer reviewed" publication, whose aim is to offer a sound and detached vision of the legal and social phenomenon of Free Software. It hosts voices from people with legal, economical and on-the-field background. The review is governed in a non partisan way by an editorial committee of fifteen members that partly rotate at each issue. I have been in the panel for the first issue, and possibly will serve as a member for the second one.

Any contribution is welcome and will be passed through an impartial evaluation by the international standard and practices.

As I reported on Identi.ca/Twitter, the Telecom Package has been rejected through the adoption of one of the major amendments and therefore there must go to a third reading after intra-institution dialogue (or tri-alogue, whatever).

It is not necessarily a win, but at least is a good outcome. Today the news was (confusedly) on the general press too, althogh it was not clear what is actually at stake. It just seems the battle between those who wants to download unpaid music and those wanting to stop "illegal" downloading. It is far more than this!

Also in Milan, upon an initiative of FSUG (Free Software User Group), an event organized in the framework of the Document Freedom Day will take place. It is one of the many events organized in Italy. It will be the day when we will promote the possibility to be independent from a single vendor and free in preserving our data in documents. Open Standards are only supported. Next 25th day of February.

Sunday, 11 January 2009, Eurid has reached 3,000,000 registered .eu domain names.

I have not seen this in the news, I thought worth remarking it.

The Freedom Task Force of the Free Software Foundation Europe has produced a Fiduciary Licence Agremment (FLA) whose scope is to centralize the copyright of a Free Software project into a single entity which acts fiduciarily to the benefit of the whole community. KDE, one of the largest Free Software (Open Source) Projects in the world has adopted it to manage its developer's copyright.