Hi all,
This summer's restaurant-meeting will take place at the "Il Fragolino" (italian food : http://www.il-fragolino.lu)
Please confim your presence by mail : contact(a)linux.lu before monday 23/08/2004 !
Your better half is also welcome ;)
Regards,
--
Pascal Steichen
pascal.steichen(a)linux.lu
Lilux ASBL
www.lilux.lu
" Linux is like a woman, hard to understand
But very nice once you get under the hood. "
The LU page for this can be found here, but please read further to get more info about this action :
http://www.linux.lu/wiki/index.php/FFIILetterAndPostCardAction
Thanks for our help !
For LiLux asbl,
pst
----- Forwarded message from Lars Noschinski <lars(a)public.noschinski.de> -----
Hello!
As some as you may have read on bxl, yesterday the 20th and last
translation of the Councils proposal for a directive "on the
patentability of computer-implemented inventions" (better known as
software patents) appeared on the councils website:
http://register.consilium.eu.int/servlet/driver?page=Result&lang=EN&typ=Adv…
For the delivery of the Urgent Call this means, the countdown has been
started. After a six week period, the Council can formally adopt this
political agreement, so this bad proposal will go the the Parliament
again.
To reach our aim of reversing the 18 May Council's decision, we have
prepared the Urgent Call
http://swpat.ffii.org/xatra/cons0406
an appeal to the national governments and parliaments to prevent the
formal adoption of the May 18 Council's Decision and work on that
directive on political (not bureaucratic) point of view.
To be most effective, the UC must be delivered in all European
countries. Some are partly finished, a few (Greece and France) are
already done, but there are also some countries where nobody started it
yet.
If you don't want to software patents, this is a task where you can
reach something meaningful.
How can I participate?
======================
Nice to know there is so much support :)
At first, you should find out, who's working on it in your country yet
and contact him/her. You find this information on
http://kwiki.ffii.org/LtrCons0406En
and your countries page linked from there may be information about the
current state and open tasks. You can contact me, if you're missing the
mail addresses.
If you need support, consilium-parl will be glad to help you. How to
subscribe is described on:
http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/consilium-parl
Nobody is taking care of it in my country!
==========================================
That's the hard case. Fortunately, you can build on the preparations
made in other countries.
As you'll most certainly have questions and to stay informed,
consilium-parl will be useful. Also, having 1-2 or more persons
supporting you will make it easier.
For collaborative work, there is a national wiki page, linked from
http://kwiki.ffii.org/LtrConsRecv0406En
If you start working on it, please drop me a note, so I know somebody is
taking care of it and I can rest easy ;)
What's to be done?
==================
For the delivery of the Urgent Call, some basic tasks must be done:
* Collect the documents to send.
The Urgent Call consists of the letter itself and some accompagning
appendixes. The letter itself should be translated and typesetted. As
time is running out now, I suggest not to translate the appendixes
anymore, just use one of the translated versions, they are listed on
http://kwiki.ffii.org/LtrCons0406En, just like the instructions for
translating
* Find recipients
For the beginning, collect 4-5 recipients (Head of state, head of
parliament, concerned minister(s), (concerned MP)). List them with
their addresses (post + phone if possible) on your national wiki page.
If you started sending, you may extend this list to reach more people,
but as we don't have much time, I suggest to start with a few.
* Customizing
Either you write a cover letter or you customize the letter to address
it to each specific recipient (a "Dear Mr. President, ..." may be
enough). Put a pdf online for every version.
* Sending
See also: http://kwiki.ffii.org/LtrConsSend0406En
Send it as a letter to each recipient. Phone them a few days later to
ensure, that they received and read it. If there is a signatory from
your country, he/she/it should be able to forward it too (CEA-PME has
members in many european countries, this may be worth a look). Also
other FFII supporters should spread it. If they write a short,
personal cover letter, it'll improve attention.
Links about the Urgent Call
===========================
* The Urgent Call
http://swpat.ffii.org/xatra/cons0406
* Reversal of the Council's decision
http://kwiki.ffii.org/ConsReversEn
* Main project page / news
http://kwiki.ffii.org/LtrCons0406En
* Delivery organisation page (with links to national organisation pages)
http://kwiki.ffii.org/LtrConsRecv0406En
* Sending instructions / results
http://kwiki.ffii.org/LtrConsSend0406En
Thank you for reading this long mail!
Lars Noschinski, project leader Urgent Call
_______________________________________________
Lu-parl maillist
Subscribe through the project system http://www.ffii.org/assoc/knecht/proj/, fine-tune via http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/lu-parlhttp://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/lu-parl
----- End forwarded message -----
--
Pascal Steichen
pascal.steichen(a)linux.lu
Lilux ASBL
www.lilux.lu
" Linux is like a woman, hard to understand
But very nice once you get under the hood. "
Bill Gates: Ich hätte gerne einen BigMac
Kassierer: Ein Big Mac, eine Cola. Macht 6,99.
Bill Gates: Ich habe nur einen BigMac bestellt!
Kassierer: Die Cola gehört dazu, ist Teil eines Gesamtpakets.
Bill Gates: Wie bitte? Die Cola zahle ich nicht
Kassierer: Brauchen sie auch nicht. Die Cola ist gratis.
Bill Gates: Aber kostete der BigMac alleine bisher nicht 3,99?
Kassierer: Stimmt, aber der BigMac hat jetzt neue
Leistungsmerkmale. Er hat eine Cola im Lieferumfang!
Bill Gates: Ich habe eben erst eine Cola getrunken. Ich brauche jetzt
keine Cola.
Kassierer: Dann gibt's auch keinen BigMac.
Bill Gates: Na gut, ich zahle 3.99 und verzichte auf die Cola.
Kassierer: Man kann die Teile des Gesamtpaketes nicht trennen. BigMac
und Cola sind nahtlos integriert.
Bill Gates: Quatsch. BigMac und Cola sind zweierlei!
Kassierer: Passen sie mal auf. (Er tunkt den BigMac in einen Becher
Cola.)
Bill Gates: Was soll denn das?
Kassierer: Das ist im Interesse des Kunden, So können wir einen
einheitlichen Geschmack in allen Komponenten garantieren.
Hi,
on behalf of Bob Hentges, I'm hereby announcing that
http://lb.wikipedia.org/ is online - yes, the luxembourgish
version of Wikipedia!
Feel free to participate in the effort!
Greetings, Eric
Hi,
according to Heise, Munich puts it's Linux migration project on hold,
because of a risk analysis regarding software patents.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/49735
Thanks to the german federal government for that one :-(
Greets Eric
Hi all,
http://www.linux-kongress.org/2004/
The Linux Kongress is taking place from September 7th to 10th in
Erlangen, Germany.
It is a very technical series of tutorials and presentations.
(Very) High-level people from the Linux (I might add GNU/, but there
really are kernel guys ;-)) developers community will be there to
present their work.
The proceedings are in english.
If you're interested, be quick to register & pay, as it will
get you a tariff reduction - no reduction available for being
LiLux member, I'm afraid.
Greetings, Eric
Voilà, un nouvel argument contre les brevets logiciels, respectivement
pour si on s'appelle MSFT.
Serge
-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Florian Mueller <florian(a)mysql.com>
To: 'Bxl' <bxl(a)ffii.org>
Subject: EU Software Patents Jeopardise Munich's Linux Migration; FFII Patent Search Triggers Motion by Munich Alderman
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 10:06:30 +0200
FFII Patent Search Triggers Motion by Munich Alderman
EU Software Patents Jeopardise Munich's Linux Migration
Munich, 07/30/2004 -- When the city administration of Munich decided to
migrate its IT infrastructure to the Linux operating system, it made
headline news around the world. That project is now being threatened by a
proposed European Union directive on software patents. The directive is
pushed for by the governments of Germany, the UK, France, and other
countries on the EU Council.
Software patents are considered the greatest danger to the usage and
development of Linux and other Free Software. A cursory search by FFII
revealed that the Linux "base client", which the city of Munich plans to
install on the desktop computers of approximately 14,000 employees, is in
conflict with more than 50 European software patents.
Today Jens Muehlhaus, an alderman from the Green Party, filed two motions in
which he calls on the mayor of Munich, the Social Democrat Christian Ude, to
contact the federal government of Germany on this matter and to analyse how
the EU software patent directive affects Munich's Linux project. The
politician, a supporter of open source, warns that patent infringement
assertions could take entire departments of the city administration out of
operation. He attached the preliminary result of FFII's patent search to his
motions. Mr. Muehlhaus expresses concern over the future ability of open
source software to meet the needs of the city administration if software
patents massively hinder its development. Related caveats have been voiced
by the SME association CEA-PME and by Deutsche Bank Research.
A week earlier, the chief information officer of Munich, Wilhelm Hoegner,
said it is "indispensable" to check on the consequences of the software
patent directive to open source software. Any such oversight would be a
"catastrophe for Munich's Linux migration project, and for open source in
general".
Florian Mueller, an active participant in the software patent debate, sees
the EU Council on the wrong track: "Open source is a historic opportunity
for Europe to save costs and create jobs. Schroeder, Blair and Chirac should
demonstrate leadership and stop their civil servants from sacrificing the
open source opportunity to the insatiable patent bureaucracy, lest some
large corporations will shut down open source and many SMEs." Mr. Mueller is
a software entrepreneur, and an adviser to Europe's largest open source
software company MySQL.
http://kwiki.ffii.org/Limux040730En
_______________________________________________
bxl mailing list
(un)subscribe via
http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/bxl and http://aktiv.ffii.org/. If you subscribed via the latter, you can unsubscribe only by going to both.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Serge Marelli, Luxembourg
E-mail : serge.marelli(a)linux.lu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
LiLux, Luxembourg LUG : http://www.linux.lu/
Defending Innovation against Patent Inflation http://swpat.ffii.org/
Chers zamis, membres z'et lecteurs,
Je vous fais suivre ce petit message qui pourrait vous intéresser... un
appel (pétition) pour l'utilisation de standards et méthodes de
traitement de données ouverts...
Ca vaut peut-être la peine de jeter un oeil
Serge
-----Forwarded Message-----
I've read about a (new?) statement by OpenGroup and
IBM which is looking for developers to sign it.
It's an endorsement to standards and open data processing.
http://www.opengroup.org/declaration/declaration.htm
Apparently Open Group (Posix certification, etc.) used
to be less than nice to the free software community but
changed policy one year ago (I don't know for real, I've read
it somewhere). I forgot whether Open Group had any stated
position on swpats (which are an impediment to open standards
).
I wonder if this declaration means that IBM wants EP amendment 6a
on interoperability...
Did anybody hear more about this ?
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Serge Marelli, Luxembourg
E-mail : serge.marelli(a)linux.lu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
LiLux, Luxembourg LUG : http://www.linux.lu/
Defending Innovation against Patent Inflation http://swpat.ffii.org/