LLW 2024 +++ YH4F interviews +++ Ada in France
May comes with legal news such as the Legal & Licensing Workshop and
the Bitcoin lawsuit regarding the liability of Free Software developers.
We also talked to two 2023 YH4F participants and our Danish local group
sent an Open Letter to their parliament. Did you see that Ada &
Zangemann won a prize and that the French ebook version is now
available?
Table of contents
Quote of the Month
"As in our democracies, the distribution of power in the field of
technology is essential. And we need to show that an inclusive path is
possible".
-Matthias Kirschner, thanking the Forum InCyber for the prize given to Ada & Zangemann.
LLW 2024: A forum for difficult legal topics of Free Software in Gothenburg
For the second year in a row, the Swedish city of Gothenburg hosted an
edition of the Free Software Legal & Licensing Workshop (LLW), the
annual conference for the Legal Network members. The 2024 edition brought new
faces and great discussions and presentations on current legal and
licensing issues related to technological developments such as AI.
Meet Antoni and Tobias, YH4F participants
Find out more about the Youth Hacking 4 Freedom participants of the 2023
edition. We are continuing this series talking with Antoni and
Tobias: Antoni developed a dictionary to preserve endangered
languages, and Tobias conceived a rich featured calendar.
Free Software developers' liability and the Bitcoin lawsuit
Free Software is everywhere, with studies estimating that it is present
in about 96% of the applications that we use. But what are the
responsibilities and liabilities of the Free Software developers? A
potential threat to Free Software developers looms in the form of an
ongoing lawsuit in the UK involving Bitcoin and its core developers.
Find more about it
Ada & Zangemann: news from France
-
‘Ada & Zangemann: A
Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream’ has been
awarded the 2024 Youth Book Prize of the InCyber Forum Europe. This is
the first time this prize has been awarded to a
children's book.
-
300 copies of Ada & Zangemann were distributed to teachers at the
Journée du Libre Éducatif 2024. The book was presented at this fair,
that this year was held in Paris, by two of the students who
translated it.
-
More great news! The French publisher CFE editions published an online
version of "Ada & Zangemann - A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and
Raspberry Ice Cream": https://ada-lelivre.fr/.
Danish local group initiative
The FSFE Danish local group has sent an Open Letter to the IT spokespersons
of all the political parties in the Danish Parliament, entitled
“Digitalisation problems can be solved with Free/Open Source Software”.
In this letter, the local group pointed out several examples of cases
in which using proprietary software is harming citizens’ rights and
privacy, for example the municipalities' strong wish to use proprietary
software (Google Classroom) in schools, which is actively sharing
students' private data to Google in violation of the GDPR.
The local group is currently waiting for an official answer from the
parliamentarians though they have already received positive responses.
You
can check the letter (in Danish) here.
Germany: Public TV broadcasters announce ‘Streaming OS’ as Free Software
The German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF have announced that they will
integrate their media centres in future and publish their code as Free
Software. Under the name ‘Streaming OS’, the software will be available
to the general public under a Free Software licence.
In their announcement, the directors of the broadcasters emphasise that
by publishing the code, they want to give something back to society that
it has previously paid for. ARD and ZDF are thus addressing the core
idea of our FSFE initiative ‘Public
Money? Public Code!’. We are looking forward to seeing Streaming OS
and its code in 2025!
The Berlin group of the FSFE participated in the 2024 edition of the
Umweltsfestival (Environmental Festival) together with Bits&Bäume
Berlin and KDE Eco. Our volunteers explained to festival attendees the
sustainable use of computers with Free Software as well as other FSFE
initiatives such as Public Money, Public Code and
even answered questions about the Fediverse.
Get involved: organize an Ada & Zangemann reading!
Do you want to help spread the word about Free Software to the younger
generations? You can do it with an Ada & Zangemann reading! If you
like children, this is an easy and a great way to talk to them about
Free Software. And everyone who has done it has found it a really
rewarding and enriching experience!
If you are interested in facilitating a reading of the book in schools
or libraries, write to contact@fsfe.org.
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our community and all the volunteers, supporters, and donors who make
our work possible, with a special mention to our translators who make it
possible for you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.
Your editor,
Ana
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