Freedom Europe

What is green?

2009-03-25T01:02:00.003+01:00

My understanding of green came over the years of hacking around European and national policies. I don't say I've been there for 10 years, it's close to more than half of that.

1. Green is responsibility,
for your own actions, how you live and what impact that have. Environment is the top issue here, but there are others. Others like

- you buy a product, where it came from? You may have idea what the company behind it put there, but is it the whole story? Ain't. It may be produced under some anti-human rights government, in some "let's be quickly a millionaire" company and also giving boost somewhere to stock market. Does it sounds complicated? Yes it does, and Yes you should care because you are responsible for it. People tend to say, it's not my problem. It is. Because now you can see the responsibility in the wrong countries under extreme governments, slavery in some let's be rich ASAP companies, destroying everything on the way, nature, people, rights. And the stock market? Don't get me started, you should watch news for last two years where the responsibility is there.

- corporations, I've been told many times that they have the right to stabilize their position on the market. That is true but they missed the point. There are too many obvious examples of stabilization in the market by corrupting government officials, money playing the only role and purpose, nature vandalism and species extinction, doing pretty much anything to drive competition out of the market, burning the ships, enslaving consumers into software and hardware technologies, vendor lock-in. People who know me will go, ah Microsoft again, this is not only Microsoft, this is any regular Corporation style and there are thousands of them. You just don't see that.

2. Green is transparency and openness,

I like some of the Nordic countries approach to that, citizens can actually read emails of high government officials. One Minister got busted lately for some nasty stuff with hookers, and this was actually found by newspaper people. This is what I call transparency. People should be able to see what is getting done by their money,
it's not only projects and spending of tax payers money, it's also the position who
execute them. We deserve to know why and how the deals were made, at the end we are
the ones paying for it.

3. Green is nature,

We as a species are failing this world. Driving other species to extinction who were
living here for so many years, even before we came here and whack the whole place. Stuff like climate change, decrease of drinking water, decrease of earth lungs. This is not only about others, this is also about ourselves. Do you think in 20 years we will have enough clean air and drinking water for around 9 billion of people?
That is the problem, we tend to make decision based on local, or better say present information. The big picture is almost always missing.

- climate change

It's here already for many decades, it's just get rapidly into public spotlight few years ago. Did you know that we are really living in age where if we don't make
serious changes in the way we live that in few years some things will happen on this planet regarding changing of environment that nobody cannot make it like before? This is the reality which I totally understood in Copenhagen three weeks ago, explained by the top world scientist on climate change.

- extinction of species

Extinction of species seems to be "relaxed" by the way we live, and some people even say it's the natural selection. When the species are hunted down by us, or we tend to destroy their last habitats, this isn't really a natural selection. This is a crime.
It's getting even worse, we are now hunting down to extinction predators which are the
top part of the ecosystem and which are actually responsible that we us humans developed into what we are. In a sense it's killing your own grandfather, destroying his house in the village to build a shopping mall.

4. Share

Money driven world isn't the right thing. When you put money on top of everything, copyright, patents, knowledge. In the end what really does matter here is only the money, not the content or the added value of sharing, for people to know, to live better. I believe that everybody deserve to know everything which was developed. It's maybe internet content, piece of software, access to technology. Of course the product need to consume resources. But why so many people work around it and get nothing form it, no added value, and only few benefit. In the end these few also try to rip you off even more, ruin your market and enslave you to be their customers. This isn't really the future I believe in.
I believe that people should have the same opportunity for anything.

- open source is green, because it shares the added value in the creation process, it tends to give your possibilities, opportunities and options.

- open standards are green

- open content is green

I'm tired, but only today.

CNBC is a joke, evil one

2009-03-06T21:32:00.005+01:00

Point of view for stock market by CNBC was ridiculous for some years now, there is nothing new there. Few days before Bear and Sterns felt totally they were promising fake securities over the company. Now everybody knows it was the beginning of the end of area for traditional western life.

I was reminded today by Jon Stewart how responsible and accurate they actually are.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Jon actually forgot one thing, how evil they are. Do you remember last year who was the major media for streaming summer games in Beijing? It was CNBC! And they got us really nasty.

Do you know what is silverlight? I just wonder how much Microsoft actually paid for "research" of such good marketing quote. It's just another Microsoft vendor lock-in, screw market, slave customers and sink competition (Adobe? Linux? everybody else?). Did I mention that it runs on many operating systems? Three already! in Windows XP is featured by free download,in Windows Vista it's probably included by default, I don't know it for sure, I never used that crap. Third one is the new let's make more revenue since everybody just hates Vista and we spend so much money on advertising and research and development also fancy called R&D. So catchy.

Guess what?
Summer games were streamed via silverlight! Oh man, that's a good one,
for morons the silverlight link was just at the top of cnbc.com for easy spotting, anyway if you clicked on the video the plugin just POPed-UP. Gosh! So easy.

To watch video using a Firefox,
please install Microsoft© Silverlight™

* Larger, higher definition video
* Watch 4 events at once
* Dynamic statistics and expert commentary
* And many more great features ...

Click To Install the Free Plugin

Can't wait to watch four events at once!
Wait a minute, it doesn't really work. Obviously my problem is this crappy cheap alternative that nobody really use.

It's Linux.

So Jon, there is always more to it :)
Love your show!

Microsoft brainwash of Slovak Government

2009-02-06T17:53:00.003+01:00

I'm trying to get my mind off work stuff, sometimes it does work out. I thought city as wild as Las Vegas make me forget, obviously enemy never sleeps.

Microsoft is doing a PR closed event about their Interoperability in Slovakia. Guess who is invited? Government representatives, probably some news papers people for cheap PR and brainwash. What is on their agenda?

Redmond beast Wilfried Groomen, responsible for global policy brainwash of governments, and some other nasty interoperability experts from Redmond and Europe. What they will be explaining to our government? Of course, how they cooperate with all the vendors on the market and how they drive interoperability with Linux. Microsoft driven Initiative for document interoperability. Microsoft and Novell cooperation in China. Alliance of interoperability founded by Microsoft and having "vendors" which turns out to be Microsoft Gold Partners (doesn't seem familiar? ISO? National standards committes stuffed with Microsoft puppets to pass propietary "open standard" OpenXML?).
Release of 44 thousand pages of "Interoperability" which most of the case was under
the rulling of EU competition rules and in the end it turned out to be technical specification of products which Microsoft did many years ago.

Are they thinking we are really so stupid?
No we aren't, but the irresponsible government and their stupidity will
just nod theirs heads off to get great deals from Microsoft which at the end turns out to be more expensive than buying the same software via regular IT company which just resells software and can make better deals for government than Microsoft itself.

Open Standards and Corporations national style

2009-01-18T19:10:00.006+01:00

I don't want to talk about the corporations which just "claim support open standards" like Microsoft because is fancy, needed and good masquerade. I want to talk about the corporations which are participating in the creation and maintenance of open standards.

I seen some of their action in policy making in Brussels over the years, some of it even had impact. Not so big thou, but the money spending for which they call their own policy is enormous. So the question is, why they do so much on big level and then in the end get beaten by their own national branches spread around EU. For sure is it lack of several things. National branches actually don't really know what is the corporate policy, except budgets, spending and salaries, which they care most about, ah yes and the limit of sold merchandise or services over the fiscal year. But they do engage in the policy making via various association for IT, egovernment, information society. But if you look closer on their members you find really bunch of Microsoft goldpartners and service providers, few hardware resellers and these guys.

I'm a committee member for standards here in Slovakia, under Ministry of Finance, durring our meetings I saw a lot of people from exactly these IT associations defending Microsoft propietary standards, with the money of IBM, Sun and Adobe. White papers clearly discrediting ODF and proposing OOXML or at least DOC. You can tell what is next. Yes, it's the consultations from them to government who just bought licenses from Microsoft for like 300.000 eur in december last year.

I just came to the begining, the beating from the bottom, national branches are in the end acting as their own enemy to HQ office. Enemy within, because of lack of managment, interest and lot of selfishness in private business.

I seen and heard of similar actions happening around EU member states, espiecially the ones
not from the western EU.

It's funny, so are you guys going to get it?

EU to probe Microsoft's ISO claim over Office software file format

2008-02-08T20:23:00.000+01:00

BRUSSELS, Feb. 8, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) -- European regulators are examining whether Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Corp violated antitrust laws during a struggle last year to ratify its Office software file format as an international standard, the Wall Street Journal reported.

more at cnn.com

Australian open source workers earn more money

2008-02-08T00:30:00.000+01:00

Interesting article about how IT open source professionals in Australia earn more than regular IT people, I would say the answer is quiet easy, open source people are better professionals :)

IT workers who specialise in free and open source software are earning more than the national average for IT, according to the results of Australia's first open source census.

more at itnews.com.au

23,000 Linux PCs forge education revolution in Philippines

2008-02-04T18:36:00.000+01:00

Providing high school students with PCs is seen as a first step to
preparing them for a technology-literate future, but in the Philippines
many schools cannot afford to provide computing facilities so after a
successful deployment of 13,000 Fedora Linux systems from a government
grant, plans are underway to roll out another 10,000 based on Ubuntu.

read the story at computerworld.com.au

EUPL released under 22 languages of EU

2008-02-01T19:49:00.000+01:00

EUPL, European Union Public Licence is a Open Source like licence, developed by the European Commission for usage in the public sector of member states.

Why Open Source like? Well, by the meaning it is open source but it wasn't approved by Open Source Initiative in US, actually no one even submitted it.

You can reach the licence in 22 languages here.

Wikidot released under GNU Affero General Public License v3

2008-01-31T21:18:00.000+01:00

The Wikidot Team is happy to announce the open-source release of the Wikidot software. We are opening both the Version 1 codebase that currently powers Wikidot.com and the new development code for Wikidot 2, our next generation wiki platform, both under GNU Affero General Public License version 3.

more at wikidot.com

Open Source in science and education conference

2008-01-31T20:06:00.000+01:00

We will have a one day Open Source event durring the Aplimat 2008, which is 7^th International Conference on Applied Mathematics hosted every year in Bratislava. Our Open Source day started last year durring the 6th year of this conference and we officially started the openacademy.eu project there. Openacademy.eu focus on developing Open Source project for their usage in education in Slovakia, and we are planning to make the project available for more European countries in the future.

http://www.aplimat.com/
http://sk.openacademy.eu/node/157

Slovakia wants to host OpenOffice.org developer conference 2008

2008-01-31T19:52:00.000+01:00

OpenOffice.org developer conference brings OO.o people from around the world to discuss the future of the open source office suite. This year Slovakia (SKOSI) is also running for hosting this event. We already started the preparation in December 2007, which did receive a huge popularity among our small European country. Sun, Novell, New Media Group, and few other companies pledged for help in organization, also the Slovak open source community is getting involved from different projects.

We are also playing with the Idea of making a co-event during the OpenOffice.org conference, which will be something like a Open Source Week, organizing smaller one day events durring the week, one day can be for the government, another for education and we can finish it with Software Freedom Day 2008 which will happen 4th time in Slovakia.

Right now the core team is around 10 people and we also have around 20 volunteers.

Wish is luck to see such great event happen in eastern Europe, nothing similar was here ever, this can be the first time...

OpenOffice.org dismisses pro-OOXML report

2008-01-29T21:29:00.000+01:00

OpenOffice.org has dismissed an analyst report from Burton Group which claims that Microsoft's Office Open XML document format is preferable to the OpenDocument Format.

zdnet.com

Sun acquires MySQL

2008-01-17T16:48:00.000+01:00

After all the industry speculation about MySQL being a “hot 2008 IPO”, this probably takes most of us by surprise — users, community members, customers, partners, and employees. And for all of these stakeholders, it may take some time to digest what this means. Depending on one’s relationship to MySQL, the immediate reaction upon hearing the news may be a mixture of various feelings, including excitement, pride, disbelief and satisfaction, but also anxiety.

Being part of the group planning this announcement for the last few weeks, I have had the fortune to contemplate the consequences during several partially sleepless nights (I usually sleep like a log). And over the coming days and weeks, I’ll provide a series of blogs with various viewpoints of the deal.

First of all, let’s point out a couple of facts about Sun Microsystems — since all MySQL stakeholders may not be fully up to speed about Sun.

more at mysql blog

Council of Ministers calls on members to use Open Standards and also use Open Source

2007-12-03T11:11:00.000+01:00

The Council of Ministers, the Council of Europe's highest decision-making body, calls on its' members to ensure a diversity of software models by mixing Open Source, free and proprietary software.

In a statement the council last week adopted recommendations on measures to increase the public service value of the Internet. The councils' members "should develop strategies which promote sustainable economic growth via competitive market structures in order to stimulate investment into critical Internet resources and ICTs." Ensuring a diversity of software including Open Source should be part of these strategies.

The council also recommends that members ensure their policies on telecommunications, broadcasting and the Internet make these IT systems interoperable by using open standards.

Canadian Greens add FOSS to election platform

2007-11-06T20:51:00.000+01:00

Thanks to a founding member of Free Geek Vancouver, the Green Party of Canada has quietly become the first major political party in Canada to make support for free and open source software (FOSS) part of its election platform. Like officials in the Green Party of England and Wales, deputy leader Adriane Carr sees the move as compatible with basic Green ideas, but IT consultant Neil Adair also points out the move serves the practical purpose of helping the party match the technical resources of more established parties.

At the same time, the party has come out in favor of net neutrality in its platform, although it is not specifically mentioned in the official policy statement.

Read the whole story at linux.com

UK Schools warned off Microsoft deal

2007-10-30T20:12:00.000+01:00

The UK computer agency Becta is advising schools not to sign licensing agreements with Microsoft because of alleged anti-competitive practices.

more at bbc.co.uk

OpenDVD v1.1 is a hit!

2007-10-30T14:11:00.000+01:00

OpenDVD is a small project of OpenAcademy, containing Free/Libre and Open Source software for educational purposes.

Until today we received request from 150 schools, 3 universities in Slovakia and something unexpected 10 schools and 2 universities from Czech Republic. Right now we are slowly closing the availability of the OpenDVD for version 1.1 and we will be creating version 1.2 by the end of 2007. We are also thinkin about puting a new localization of the FLOSS applications and that will be Czech, since we are getting a lot of interest for this project in Czech Republic. We look forward to finding a new partners in this project from Czech Republic.

Let me know!

South Africa adopts ODF as govt standard

2007-10-30T14:01:00.000+01:00

Open Document format (ODF) yesterday became an official standard for South African government communications.

The ODF standard is included in the government's Mininimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in government (MIOS) released yesterday.

In the foreword to the document, department of public service and administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, says that "this updated version of MIOS contains an explicit definition of open standards as well as the inclusion of the ISO Open Document Format".

more at tectonic.co.za

Netherlands government plans the use of open standards and open source

2007-09-19T08:55:00.000+02:00

Two days ago, Ministry of Economics of Netherlands announced in a press release a use of open standards and open source solutions in the government sector.

original message

english translation

SFD'07 preparation in Slovakia

2007-09-07T19:22:00.000+02:00

It's only 8 days to the international Software Freedom Day, which will be held by 300 teams around the world. For Slovakia and it's third year of SFD we prepared this action in three cities. Bratislava, Kosice and Nove Mesto nad Vahom are going to offer a one day of software freedom near you.

For Bratislava we prepared something new, durring the last two years all the people were coming to the event on a specified location. This year SFD in Bratislava will be hosted in one of the biggest shopping malls called Polus City Center. We believe that bringing free software to the totaly new an unknown people can have better impact of the cause.

We gladly thank our sponsors which made this event more exciting for us and those coming to it. (Sun Microsystems Slovakia, Technical University of Kosice, Slovak Open Source Initiative, Linuxos.sk, Linuxfest people, and all the media partners as well)

OpenDVD for education in Slovakia

2007-09-07T19:17:00.000+02:00

opendvd version 1.1 contains open source software for Windows in Slovak and English language. Some of the applications are available with a Slovak book attached in PDF.

Office: OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, PDFcreator, Ghostscript
Draw: TuxPaint, Inkscape, Scribus, Blender3D, Gimp
Code: Nvu, Lazarus/Free Pascal, Netbeans
Edu: Stelarium, Celestia, TuxTyping
Edu-K12: Gcompris
Math: Maxima, Octave, Gnuplot, Scilab
Geography: GrassGIS

dvd is available under sk.openacedemy.eu project

for version 1.2 we are preparing a offline version of slovak wikipedia portal

SKOSI joins egovernment committee in Slovakia

2007-09-05T14:50:00.000+02:00

SKOSI, non for profit organization joined committee for standardization of information systems for public administration. The Committee for standardization of information systems is responsible for creating electronic standards for public administration in several sectors, egovernment, ehealth, European network and abroad communication. Committee is the supreme body for egovernment in the Slovak Republic under Ministry of Finance, egovernment section which was formerly hosted under Ministry of Telecomunications.

We are looking forward to bring more open standards into information systems in Slovak public sector.

Malaysia formally embraces Open Document Format

2007-08-15T11:02:00.000+02:00

The Malaysian government today announced plans to adopt open standards and the Open Document Format (ODF) within the country's public sector.

The Malaysian Administration Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) last week issued a tender for a nine-month study to evaluate the usage of open standards in its information communications technology (ICT) deployment. The study will also look into how the Malaysian public sector should migrate to open standards and the ODF, according to the Malaysia Open Source Software Alliance (MOSSA).

more at zdnetasia.com

Lotus Notes 8 with OpenOffice?

2007-08-15T10:53:00.000+02:00

Obviously IBM push harder in supporting ODF and Open Source technology.

More at vnunet.com

IBM is preparing to ship a new version of its Lotus Notes and Domino applications on 17 August, according to a company website that was published on Tuesday.

Notes will also incorporate additional productivity applications such as OpenOffice.

Czech goes for NO

2007-07-14T13:38:00.000+02:00

Czech Normalization Institute (CNI) accepted half of the submitted technical comments to the committee earlier last month. There is a new deadline 16.7.2007 for consulting accepted comments to the DIS29500, however they will not accept any new comments but still can remove already accepted comments. Main purpose of this procedure is to provide a clearer view on the existing comments and fix any bugs made in the proceeding. CNI will vote for no with comments, and this statement shouldn't change until all of the submitted comments are dealt with.

Closer on comments, there was total 61 submitted comments which 32 of these were accepted as issues by CNI. Some of the comments were very relevant, somehow the good interpretation was missing.

The webpage with accepted and rejected comments by CNI is here.

Government of Japan Embraces Open Software Standards

2007-07-14T13:36:00.000+02:00

The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), the leading organization advocating for openness and accessibility to government documents and information, today congratulated Japan for adopting a policy under which government ministries and agencies will solicit bids from software vendors whose products support internationally recognized open standards.

Previously, government agencies could ask bidders to submit bids based on whether their products offered functions comparable to particular software suites. With the new interoperability framework, which takes effect immediately, the government will give preference to procuring products that adhere to open standards, and which interoperate easily with other software.

The new guidelines, available from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, were designed to be implemented by government ministries and agencies. The interoperability framework also suggests that the guidelines would also be useful for private industry.

govtech.com

Anti-Microsoft Office campaign gathers pace

2007-07-13T18:15:00.000+02:00

3:06PM, Friday 13th July 2007

More than 20,000 people have put their names to a web petition
opposing Microsoft's attempts to have its new Office file format
accepted as an international standard.

The NoOOXML.org petition calls on members of the ISO (International
Organization for Standardization) to vote against accepting Open XML,
which it says Microsoft is trying to fast-track through the approval
process

"People are outraged by what's going on," said petition author
Benjamin Henrion. "Not since the software patents fight have we seen
such a reaction from the online community. And it's gone global. Users
are happy with the existing international standard for documents, and
can't see why Microsoft is forcing its own standard except in pure
self-interest."

Henrion says that Microsoft's specification is closed, protected by
patents and secrets. The petition lists eight objections. Others have
pointed to serious bugs, such as the format's inability to handle
dates before 1900.

PCpro.co.uk

Computers for good cause

2007-07-02T11:22:00.000+02:00

June In Bratislava,

Dell corporation along with NGO Pontis created a project of giving away used DELL computers from DELL call centre in Bratislava. Around 77 non-governmental organizations received 280 computers with Ubuntu cds, Slovak manual and online support from Slovak Open Source Initiative(SKOSI.org). Most receivers are working with handicapped people like Slovak Union of sightless and Sight-Impaired or with children and schools. Around 30 - 40 % of the NGOs welcomed free and open source software on their computers. Around 10% asked for K Desktop Environment (KDE), which means they know it before.

For the open call in April, we had 711 applicant for 3680 computers, which clearly shows a great possibility to do similar projects in the future.

OpenXML, comments

2007-06-14T10:35:00.000+02:00

I was studying both the 6.000 pages Open XML ISO specification and comments to the fast track procedures by several parties around world. It's clearly impossible to implement such standard as it is by a competitive vendor to Microsoft. Microsoft made a good effort to lock-up his standard and made it unavailable for implementation for anyone else.

The OOXML specification is protected by multiple patents, where as the patent holder Microsoft corporation does not guarantee not to sue or confer any other rights for competitors. The basic implementation of such standard by the competition can face patent infringement cases around the world. This means a real threat for competitive applications even before the development begins.

From the beginning, office suite applications by Microsoft were benefiting from their proprietary standards, where other parties were unable to implement such standard and make their products compatible. Microsoft decided to ignore the existing open standards, and as we have seen in the past, they are trying to bring upon a new “open” proprietary standard that can be fully integrated only by Microsoft itself. There have been Open Standards for document exchange out there for a longer time, Microsoft had pledged only one step for its implementation, but in the end it turns out to be a third party plug-in which was made by another developer (Sun Microsystems).

To date, the standard has not been implemented by its vendor or the competition. It is clear that the Microsoft product will switch to their “open” standard in a certain time; does this mean competition in the field of standards?

Will be Mao Tse Tung replaced by Bill Gates?

2007-06-14T10:24:00.000+02:00

According to Greg Mundy speech at Microsoft Innovation day for SMEs in Brussels last week, young people in China need human Icons for leader ship. Greg Mundy describe how similar Icons from United States software industry are well accepted in India and China, countries which are going the Open Source way. Obviously Microsoft is spending lot of money and lobbyist around there to keep up the licensing money come in. It's clear that communistic China won't accept a capitalist leader, no matter if it's proprietary software king or UK Prime Minister, it's literally unreal.

Greg Mundy also describe how the business in EU are going backwards and how we should learn from US and mostly from it's patent industry which protect innovation.

Hopefully, this kind of protection (claiming business, acounting methods and software patents) won't happen in EU.

Microsoft claims Linux violate its patents

2007-05-14T11:30:00.000+02:00

Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users. Users like you, maybe. Fortune's Roger Parloff reports.

CNN.com

Dell goes ubuntu

2007-05-04T12:59:00.000+02:00

At the end of May, the No. 2 PC maker will begin selling some consumer-focused laptop and desktop models with Ubuntu's new "Feisty Fawn" version of Linux installed, Dell spokesman Kent Cook said. The company announced the Linux move on Tuesday on its IdeaStorm site, launched in February to gather feedback directly from customers about what they want.

news.com.com

Nokia Sued Over Phone Messaging Patents

2007-05-04T02:12:00.000+02:00

A New Zealand-based company has sued Nokia over certain messaging technologies within its phones, claiming the Finnish phone maker is using its technology surrounding data packaging. The suit was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Monday. A case by Michael S Sutton Ltd. had previously been filed, but was voluntarily dismissed for an unknown reason.

betanews

EUPACO-2, European Patent Conference

2007-04-17T15:46:00.000+02:00

Brussels, 13 April 2007 -- On 15 and 16 May, over thirty experts from universities, institutions, government, and industry gather in Brussels to discuss the question "What future for the patent system in Europe?"

Among the speakers are William Kovacic, US Federal Trade Commissioner, Ron Marchant, former Chief Executive of the UK Patent Office, Prof. Reto Hilty of the Max Planck Institute, and South African entrepreneur and industry leader Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, Ltd.

Brian Kahin of Washington-based CCIA, one of the organisations behind EUPACO, explains: "while the recent Communication from the Commission, 'Enhancing the patent system in Europe', focuses on the problems of the Community patent and the European Patent Litigation Agreement, it acknowledges the need for a holistic approach to patent policy. EUPACO-2 is a milestone event that addresses four main issues: costs and benefits, quality, diversity, and institutions."

EUPACO-2 is the third event in the EUPACO series. In 2006, the FFII - a pan-European association representing small-to-medium IT firms and IT professionals - launched EUPACO to stimulate debate about the future of the EU patent system. The FFII has contributed to the European debate on software patents for over seven years.

Pieter Hintjens, FFII President and EUPACO founder, explains: "Until recently the European patent system seemed to be leaping, eyes closed, over the cliff in an imitation of US pratice. Now both sides of the Atlantic are looking for reform. We want a fresh, transatlantic debate to learn from each other's mistakes and best practices."

Hintjens concludes: "Much dialogue on patents is dominated by patent bureaucrats and attorneys. But we must discuss the future of the patent system openly, and embrace change where needed. Patents are economic tools, so we must measure them by their ability to drive innovation in today's diverse markets. A focus on economics, data and open-minded discussion between many parties is what makes EUPACO so unique and attractive."

Background information

Conference dates: 15-16 May 2007
Location: Metropole Hotel, Brussels
Registration fee: 250.00 EUR excl. VAT
Conference website: http://www.eupaco.org

Slovak Math Ubuntu out

2007-03-19T14:27:00.000+01:00

OpenAcademy, community runned project announced by SKOSI.org in late February is creating a new solution for the academic sector in Slovakia. Slovak Math Ubuntu is a live cd project distributed under GPL for using open technologies in the mathematical lecturing and classes.

Main developer Peter Mann has been involved within the open source for many years mainly in Debian, later on Ubuntu and developing teaching architectures in Slovak technical university in Kosice.

howto (sk)
download

Criminal Sanctions Rapporteur fails to protect European industry

2007-03-19T14:24:00.000+01:00

Brussels, 19 March 2007 -- The upcoming vote on Tuesday 20 March on the
Criminal Sanctions Directive in the EP's Legal Affairs Committee (JURI)
is premature and non-transparent. Despite three delays, the issue of
criminalising all infringements, even those on unexamined rights,
remains unsolved. In hastily drafted last-minute oral amendments by the
rapporteur, On. Nicola Zingaretti, even "acceptance" of infringements is
now criminalised. The Criminal Sanctions Rapporteur fails to protect the
European industry and citizens.

In a letter to the Members of the European Parliament the FFII states
that the Legal Affairs Committee draft report for the Criminal Measures
IPR Directive is, despite several delays, not ready for adoption.
Virtually all industries have asked to limit the directive to clear
cases of piracy, but rapporteur On. Nicola Zingaretti has not tabled any
amendments to this effect.

The FFII therefore strongly urges him to reconsider his report. FFII
analyst Ante Wessels comments: "From an industry point of view the
situation is clear: fight piracy, but do not criminalise legitimate
commercial enterprises. The industry and the academic world agree on this."

Furthermore, a broad concept of secondary liability is introduced by
adding the word "acceptance" to the definition of intentional
infringement. This even surpasses the much criticised Commission
proposal to criminalise "inciting, abetting and aiding" infringements.
If adopted, this could result in software providers being held liable if
their software does not actively prevent copyright and database right
violations by its users.

Wessels adds "Unfortunately, one strong pressure group is quite happy
with this turn of events: Hollywood and the music industry. They want to
equate the younger music-downloading generation with industrial pirates,
and let the police take over prosecutions which hurt their public image.
They push for the weakest possible definitions, in order to criminalise
end users and hold software providers liable. Hollywood has been calling
Members of the Legal Affairs Committee daily."

Pieter Hintjens, FFII president, says: "The proposed text is an
undetermined and shoddy draft which pleases only one party, but will
harm many others. The rapporteur failed to choose for the European
industry, and his last minute changes are making the situation even
worse. He had a year to fix this text but seems to be unable to work out
a sensible compromise. This sharply contrasts with the Industry
Committee's rapporteur David Hammerstein, who managed to obtain support
from all political groups for a fairly balanced text."

Background Information

Apart from the FFII, at least the following stakeholders have asked to
limit the directive to clear cases of piracy: The Max Planck Institute
for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law, the Chartered
Institute of Patent Attorneys, the Law Society of England and Wales, the
Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour, EGA (generic medicins), EICTA (ICT),
ECIS (ICT), ECTA (trademark association), FIPR (information policy
research), BEUC (consumers), LACA (libraries) and ETNO (telecom).

The Max Planck Institute for IP, Competition and Tax Law (Germany), and
the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (UK) have given detailed
recommendations on how to limit the directive to clear cases of piracy.
The draft report does not implement any of these recommendations.

The draft voting list published by the JURI Secretariat moreover
contains several serious errors. On the one hand it allows for
contradicting amendments to be adopted, and on the other hand several
non-conflicting amendments supposedly render each other unvotable. For
example, a definition which limits criminalisation of trademark
infringement to counterfeiting (Am 70) supposedly conflicts with
exempting parallel importation from criminal prosecution (Am 71).

Criminal Measures IP Directive – 4 Essential Issues and Solutions

2007-02-27T13:37:00.000+01:00

FFII letter to the Members of the European Parliament.

Re: Amended proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights (COM/2006/0168 final - COD 2005/0127)

Dear members of the European Parliament,

On. Nicola Zingaretti, rapporteur, decided to postpone the Legal Affairs Committee vote on the Criminal Measures IP Directive. We applaud and welcome this decision that creates time to adequately address important concerns. No compromises have yet been reached on essential issues as whether to criminalise consumers, the scope of the directive, and on measures to ensure IPR disputes that are essentially of a civil nature and occur between legitimate commercial enterprises, are not criminalised.

Some proposed measures threaten to criminalise large portions of the online population without demonstrable need or justification – even IP lawyers like Manders and Lehne risk criminalising themselves and the visitors of their websites. [1]

For the first time ever the European Community can impose criminal laws on the Member States. The Criminal Measures IP directive will influence the lives of 500 million Europeans. Highly respectable law institutions have published critical position papers about the Commission proposal. Their positions are generally in line with the industry's. Below we will identify the four most important unresolved issues and elaborate on how the experts propose to solve them.

more at ffii.org

IPRED2: Pausing For Thought

2007-02-27T13:24:00.000+01:00

Call it the Universal Law of Bad Laws: the more problematic a proposed piece of legislation is, the keener its advocates are to rush it through. When that happens, it's often those in the system who call for delay that saves us all from its unintended consequences.

Praise, then, is due then for Nicola Zingaretti, the Italian Member of European Parliament (MEP) responsible for guiding the dangerous Second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive (IPRED2) through the European Parliament. Zingaretti called last week for another delay in a key vote by the EU's Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI), originally scheduled for today.

Zingaretti's postponement of the vote (his third) shows the complexity and the growing contentiousness of the directive, first proposed by the European Commission in 2005.

Even after several months of negotiations, MEPs cannot agree its core concept - defining when behavior is on a "commercial scale" and therefore subject to the draft's harsh criminal penalties - and are taking a closer look at how the directive would affect consumers. That's a welcome development, although disconcerting that it is taking place so perilously close to the final key vote.

The good news is that Zingaretti's postponement gives everyone a much-needed three week window to ponder the dangers of the directive.

more at eff.org

Microsoft to pay 1.3m $ for mp3 fraud

2007-02-23T12:51:00.000+01:00

Microsoft is pushed to pay fines over mp3 fraud to Alcatel-Lucent.

Main article in german.

Russian schools abandon Windows?

2007-02-08T08:52:00.000+01:00

Schools in the Perm region will soon quit buying software from commercial companies, said the region’s Education Minister Nikolay Karpushin. The announcement was made in line with the report on ensuring “license purity” in the region’s schools.

According to Nikolay Karpushin schools would start using freely distributed software like the Linux OS, Russky office and Open office desktop apps, Ekho Moskvi reports. “Buying business and commercial programmes from producers is quite expensive”, the Minister said.

cnews.ru

McCreevy seeks new patent laws

2007-02-04T17:02:00.000+01:00

The European Commission will present new options to end a 20-year deadlock over patents, but plans for revamping a copyright tax are all but dead, internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy said today.

Past attempts to create a single EU patent that would be valid in all the bloc's countries failed due to disagreements over the number of languages to be used.

ireland.com

Microsoft IPR "sharing"

2007-02-03T18:38:00.000+01:00

It’s generally not a free license, but the intention is to give partners who do have the intention to build on these protocols a way to do so, without Microsoft giving away secrets to its competitors.

betanews

See you in Badajoz

2007-02-03T16:37:00.000+01:00

I'll be attending the FLOSS world conference 2007 in Badajoz, Spain from 7.2.2007 - 9.2.2007. Durring this event I'll have also meeting from IDABC project. I would like to meet you all :)

FLOSS in Schools day

2007-02-03T15:03:00.000+01:00

FLOSS in schools day will be part of international conference APLIMAT in Bratislava, Slovakia. Whole day will be focused on presentations of real FLOSS usage in various schools from Slovakia. Eleven teachers and university professors will bring and share the experience with different classes of open source daily use as a well build teaching platform and applications.

--
floss schools (SK)

OOXML ISO fast track opposition update

2007-02-03T14:14:00.000+01:00

France, APRIL (French Free Software Association) has sent a letter to AFNO (france
representant at ISO). french

Bernard Carayon (MP of government party in Frace) has asked a written
question to the Minister of Industry, pointing at the conflict of this
fasttrack adoption of OOXML with the recommandation of Open Document
Format in the General Referential on Interoperability (a government
initiative to "impose" open standard for public documents, it was backed
by CCIA in an open letter. french

Netherlands is against the fast track procedure. dutch

Belgium, the responsible advising committee is mostly against it but they need
unanimity and Intel and Microsoft are in favor; now the standardisation
office itself has to decide on it. dutch

FFII opposes Fasttrack adoption of Microsoft OOXML format as ISO standard

2007-01-30T03:05:00.000+01:00

Brussels, 29 January 2007 -- The FFII has sent an open letter to all delegations of the International Standardization Organization (ISO) to oppose with contradictions the "fast track" adoption of the Microsoft's 6000-page OOXML specification (ECMA-376) before the deadline of February, 5th. Microsoft's proposal damages the adoption of the existing ISO 26300 standard (OpenDocument) that covers almost the same functionality in just 600 pages.

The FFII has several concerns with the proposed standard. OpenXML relies on undisclosed patents, and undisclosed or incomplete licensing terms that make any independent reimplementation impossible or heavily risky. It obliges implementors to reverse-engineer the behavior of old closed Microsoft applications and formats. It uses non-standard formats for languages and dates, and specifies known bugs, such as treating 1900 as a leap year.

Benjamin Henrion, FFII analyst, explains: "Microsoft is pushing through a overcomplex proposal in a very short time frame. The fast-track procedure was never intended for specifications of this size and artificial complexity. It seems clear that the pressure is on ISO to not look too closely at the many traps in OOXML, which include patent minefields that will allow Microsoft to strictly control who implements this. Microsoft tried to introduce its patents into international standards before, resulting in the failure of an anti-spam standard."

Multiple associations, companies and bloggers who have looked at OOXML describe it as a "single vendor standard", since large parts of the standard simply refer to application behavior, not technical specifications. Examples include the option to enable "WordPerfect text alignment".

OOXML was produced in one year by Microsoft alone and ratified as ECMA-376 by ECMA, a private association that drafts standards on demand. It is via ECMA that Microsoft has been able to push for a fast-track procedure at ISO/IEC. By comparison, the Open Document Format ISO standard took 5 years of work through ISO/IEC and OASIS and counts with multiple implementation covering all the main platforms (Symbian, Windows, Linux, Mac OS, BSDs and Solaris). In contrast, Microsoft's format has no any implementation in market currently, and in medium terms it is expected to cover only the Microsoft platform.

Alberto Barrionuevo, FFII Vice-President, concludes: "We ask all ISO delegations to cancel the fast-track procedure. It is simply impossible to clarify all the issues and contradictions existing in ECMA-376 within such a short fast-track time frame. Indeed, this standards-stuffing attempt undermines the entire credibility of the ISO/IEC process. If Microsoft can buy a single-vendor 'standard' with impunity, what is ISO for?"

Document presentations from Interoperability - ITAPA2006

2006-12-19T02:02:00.000+01:00

We finaly manage our english presentations to be accessible world-wide. Serge Novaretti, European Commission; Wouter Tebbens, SelfProject; Erwin Tenhumberg, Sun Microsystems.

Patents out, business conflicts still criminalised - IPRED2

2006-11-28T22:42:00.000+01:00

Brussels, 28 November 2006 -- In today's vote on the "IPR Enforcement
Directive" (IPRED2, 2005/0127 (COD)), the European Parliament's Industry
Committee (ITRE) limited the directive's scope to copyright piracy and
trademark counterfeiting. The rapporteur, David Hammerstein MEP
(Greens/EFA), received backing from all groups for his amendments.

The FFII welcomes the reduced scope and other improvements, but notes
that business conflicts are still criminalised in some cases. These
issues would have been addressed by rejected amendments from MEPs
Dorette Corbey (PSE), Umberto Guidoni (GUE/NGL), Edith Mastenbroek (PSE)
and Patrizia Toia (ALDE).

Other significant amendments however mean that:

* The state cannot unilaterally start an infringement investigation. The
police cannot know about private licensing arrangements and even if
licenses are public, government bodies are sometimes confused by
unfamiliar concepts. In February 2006, a UK Trading Standards officer
wanted to prosecute a business for selling CDs of the free Firefox
browser. Further, rights holders may choose to not enforce their own
rights.

* Rights holders may not participate in criminal investigations. The Max
Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law
noted that this provision was fundamentally incompatible with a
democratic society.

The amended directive still allows some regular business conflicts to
fall under criminal law. The directive defines "counterfeiting" to
include regular trademark/tradename conflicts between companies.
Copyright piracy remains undefined. The current text therefore still
does not comply with established fundamental principles of criminal law,
which requires precise and explicit descriptions for all individual
criminal offenses.

FFII analysts also note that this is the first directive that gives the
European Community power to define criminal law which is unrelated to
trade barriers in the Internal Market. FFII president Pieter Hintjens
says "There has been very little support for this directive except from
the Commission, and we believe its real goal is to set a precedent
rather than catching pirates."

more at press.ffii.org

CPU patent threat

2006-11-25T13:57:00.000+01:00

How some people doesn't seem to see the current patent system as a threat to a healthy society and business methods is really impossible for me to believe. Check american newspapers, almost everyday you can see a patent claim sueing over really ridiculous technologies which one will find normal to use. Another case which caim to my audience this week is Intel claiming patents around making CPUs. Isn't it a good example as patent can be abused to destroy competition and overthrow the market? It isn't only in information technologies (such as software patents), but also in medical and drug research, even diseases. Can we patent a disease and make somebody pay for getting it?
With IPRED intel can not only sue competition, they can freeze their bank accounts or even shutdown a whole branch. Isn't it obvious what is going on?

- source Inquirer-

Photo story from ITAPA - eGovernment

2006-11-17T16:48:00.000+01:00

Short photo story from the ITAPA 2006 - eGovernment conference which has been held in Bratislava. Itapa is international conference focusing at eGovernment. These photos were taken in three corners of the ITAPA (Interoperability panel, FLOSS terminal corner and Open Technology stand supported by SKOSI, ngo and Sun Microsystems Slovakia).
gallery

Open technology and Interoperability event

2006-10-26T17:18:00.000+02:00

INVITATION TO ITAPA 2006 CONFERENCE

To be held on 14 – 15 November 2006 in Crowne Plaza Hotel in Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

The organisers of ITAPA 2006 in cooperation with SKOSI, non-profit organisation and Sun Microsystems have the pleasure to invite you to ITAPA 2006, a conference offering the general public several opportunities to learn about open technologies and eGovernment interoperability.

The conference will house the Interoperability panel, provided with in cooperation with the European Commission – eGovernment services, Sun Microsystems and the Ministry of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications of the Slovak Republic – eGovernment Department. All speeches will be simultaneously translated into English and Slovak. The panel will start on 14 November, 2006 at 04:00 p.m. in Section C2. Any changes of agenda reserved, please see http://www.itapa.eu.

Topic: Interoperability, the very essence of eGovernment

Speaker: Serge Novaretti, IDABC - eGovernment, European Commission

Tpoic: OpenDocument based Data freedom

Speaker: Wouter Tebbens, SELF project, supported by the European Commission, The Netherlands

Topic: OpenDocument based Data freedom

Speaker: Erwin Tenhumberg, Sun Microsystems, Open Source Group, Germany

Topic: Interoperability in Slovakia

Speaker: Ján Hochmann, Ministry of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications of the Slovak Republic

A further opportunity to learn about open technologies is to use free terminals with Internet access. Visitors will have the opportunity to discover the Slovak version of the GNU/Linux operating system running on Sun's Sun Ray thin clients and Sun ULTRA workstations.

In addition, there will be an open technologies stand where ICT experts will provide information on open technologies, and hand out miscellaneous materials and free CD's, which will enable to the visitors to take home a piece of freedom.

ITAPA is accessible to the general public, no admission required (exclusive of conference print materials, refreshment, etc.).

Tripping the ODF

2006-10-24T20:41:00.000+02:00

Trans-European meeting of the working group ODF Alliance for support and implementation of Open Document Format took place this week in Brussels. Reports from different countries calls for help in various battlefields, starting with the open standards government issues for support the legislation and decision makers.

ODF is here, it's an ISO standard, it's supported in many applications. Publishing in ODF is the way of freedom. Freedom to choose application with what you want to view or edit it. Many European countries shares the vision of Interoperability, the doors are right here but the strong opposition is showing other doors, other steps. If we want to succeed in Interoperability we should support the publishing of ODF by our government. As they are doing in Belgium, ODF is going to be the main office document format for exchanging documents. The start is a bit slower, the reading part of the ODF should be possible by september of 2007 in all governmental organizations. By the same date in 2008 they should be able to edit it as well.

Further we go, the more we need. To help ODF movement we should try to help it in general, what about a ODF online validation check? Same as W3C consortium is doing the validation of html, css and other web standards. We should be able to check the real validity of the published ODF when somebody claims he have a open standard by ODF definition which is around 700 pages.

Isn't it all about knowing that after I die, my children can access my data I saved in ODF?

Spreading awareness

2006-10-19T16:18:00.000+02:00

Creating awareness within the European community among SMEs and the FLOSS

community about the resolution of patent issues is now the most
important task we have. Without support there is no resolution, and

without resolution there is a huge threat coming upon us.

Many people do not seem to understand the issues; they say "Software
patents are over". They are not, we only stopped computer implemented
inventions last year, but that doesn't mean we have won.
There are still many ways to implement software patents in
legislation - such as EPLA or the community patent which will come into effect

next year. And still, there are other directives trying to harm us as

well. What is the worst, that some of the decision-makers in the
Commission and the
Parliament are pro-patent, which means they believe such
legislation should exist. This is where we must approach them and

change it. The matter of Open market, competition and interoperability

are at stake. It isn't only about Free Software, it's about affecting
the European market, the place where we as consumers and producers will be
harmed the most.

Addressing issues

2006-10-17T18:42:00.000+02:00

IPRED2 - IPR Enforcement Directive

Vote in the middle of December, today (17.10.2006) we successfully tabled amendments with liberal party for the ITRE committee.

IPRED2, will reshape the look on patent legislation within judgment where as abusing the patents will be prosecuted as criminal action. Basically, abusing patents can put us in jail.

Our goal is to amend the directive in it's developing process inside European Parliament to more secure directive or reject it as whole.

EPLA - European Patent Litigation Agreement

Reformation risk of Patent procedures:

Situation endangerment for SMEs in all member countries
Negative impact for initiatives of European Commission for open technologies in public sector of member states
complicated situation of international corporation focusing on ICT sector
restraint of any software development without proper patents
current reading will allow creation of complicated patents, which means for one process there can be several patents
biggest problem will be cross patenting, whereas many inventions share the same principles, e.g. almost every graphical application is using double click

Impact

Upcoming directives will make:

putting patents on the edge of European Community democratic control (Parliament, Commission, Council, and so on)
ignoring already rejected directives from European Parliament about patents
Criminal sanctions for abusing of patents

Tabling IPRED amendments for ITRE

2006-10-17T14:50:00.000+02:00

Today was deadline of amendments for ITRE (Industry, Technology, Research and Energy) committee in European Parliament. We managed to get tabled all of our amendments by Liberal party, also the one's aim for rejection of IPRED2. Woohooo!

Protecting innovation

2006-10-16T17:37:00.000+02:00

Hopefully another successful day, I started a project within Slovakia and Czech Republic “ Protecting Innovation ” which aims solving the upcoming directives in European Parliament such as IPRED ( Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive ) and EPLA ( European Patent Litigation Agreement). Working on solution together with FFII.org guys in Brussels.

Problem of IPRED is criminalization of patent usage, which basically means you can go to jail if you use other patents then you own.

EPLA, is another thing, reform of European Patent Office and putting the patent process out of European Community and out of democratic hands.

Awareness

2006-10-14T15:13:00.000+02:00

Today I finally decided to map some of my activities also in English language. I did this mainly because I believe these activities should be represented worldwide. Until now, my informational focus was Czech Republic, Slovakia and a bit Poland.

Activities; Open Source related projects such as managing, creating and helping project communities, developing projects in e-Government, school sector, private and citizens. Many of such activities involve consultations and lobbying in European Community (Parliament, Commission, Council, Regional Offices, Self-Governments and so on), protecting software development on pan European level.

I'm full time activist and currently I'm focused at IPRED (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive), OpenAkadémia project for developing teaching architecture of FLOSS in Slovakia which both needs to be solved by the end of this year.