UK: Flash is officially part of "full Internet"

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/technology-gadgets/apple-misled-iphone-users-over-internet-capability-13954298.html

"It said the combined phone, music player and computer is flawed
because of the absence of two common website programmes, Flash and
Java. As a result, the authority said Apple's claim that the iPhone
gave access to "all parts of the internet" misled customers about its
power as a web browser."

Java is now free (OpenJDK). But Flash isn't.

What does Gnash need to be up to Flash 9/10? Otherwise a free software
stack cannot claim to be "full Internet" in the UK.

- d.

European Opensource Lawyers Event, Paris 2008-09-24

Does anyone here know about this?  It sounds like a dangerous thing
that might start new GPLv3 rumours or proliferate licences more.

Message-ID: <48AAA6E7.7000600 <at> gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:56:39 +0200
From: Benjamin Jean <veille.jus <at> gmail.com>
Subject: Invitation to the first « EOLE » event / Invitation au premier évènement « EOLE »

Dear Madam,
Dear Sir,

Please allow us to draw your attention to the first EOLE conference 
(European Opensource Lawyers Event) on free/opensource software law that 
will take place at Paris on the 24^th of September, within the framework 
of the "Paris, capitale du libre" event.

The topic of this year is the legal study of the GPLv3.

Admission is free, but upon reservation and subject to availability. 
Translation facilities will be available between French-English.

More information available at this address:

_https://www.eolevent.eu <https://www.eolevent.eu/>_

Please do not hesitate to forward this message to colleagues and 
contacts who could be interested in this event.

Kind regards.

fsfe.org blogs for week 31

Source: http://fsfe.org/en/blogs_aggregation

** Robert Schuster

PhoneME Advanced Foundation (with JIT) at Jalimo
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/robertschuster/weblog/phoneme_advanced_foundation_with_jit_at_jalimo

breiPott: Free (as in Freedom) music party in Berlin
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/robertschuster/weblog/breipott_free_as_in_freedom_music_party_in_berlin

** Karsten Gerloff

A word of warning...
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/gerloff/blog/a_word_of_warning

Summary of copyright goings-on
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/gerloff/blog/summary_of_copyright_goings_on

** Benjamin Morant

fellowship meeting, Zürich 18/07/08
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/morant/geek_free_and_funny/fellowship_meeting_zuerich_18_07_08

** Stian Rødven Eide

Second FSCONS Newsletter Available
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/julipan/fscons_2008/second_fscons_newsletter_available

** Matthias Kirschner

How should a newbie search for GNU/Linux help?

The office where I work has mostly converted to free software, but sometimes
people don't know what website to go to to look for help.

It seems that each distro has it's own forums, and most projects have their
own forums or mailing lists, and then there are some general sites like
linuxquestions.org (or google.com/linux).

These are great for you and I, but not for someone who doesn't know the name
of the project that develops the application they're using, or for someone
who wouldn't think that they have to search three sets of forums.  Can
anyone recommend an umbrella site or portal that I could send them to?

Thanks.
--

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan, +32 477 36 44 19, http://ciaran.compsoc.com/

Support free software, join FSFE's Fellowship: http://fsfe.org

Recent blog entries:

http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/using_latex_to_make_pdf_documents_with_japanese_characters
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/links_sean_daly_kde_swpat_chessboxing
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/links_india_pats_clipperz_freegis_rms_emacs
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/using_and_writing_emacs_22_input_methods

fsfe.org blogs for week 29

Some things are nowadays being put on the fsfe.org blogs that might have
previously been sent here, so maybe it would be good to push the fsfe.org
links to discussion@ every Friday morning.

Source: http://fsfe.org/en/blogs_aggregation

* Karsten Gerloff
  EC has a copyright day: term extension, Green Paper
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/gerloff/blog/ec_has_a_copyright_day_term_extension_green_paper

  Hell freezes over as WSJ says patents stifle innovation
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/gerloff/blog/hell_freezes_over_as_wsj_says_patents_stifle_innovation

* Ciaran O'Riordan
  Using LaTeX to make PDF documents with Japanese characters
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/using_latex_to_make_pdf_documents_with_japanese_characters

* Robert Schuster
  Invasion of the low power devices
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/robertschuster/weblog/invasion_of_the_low_power_devices

* Benjamin Morant
  No Holidays for Freedom Fighters ?
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/morant/geek_free_and_funny/no_holidays_for_freedom_fighters

--

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan, +32 477 36 44 19, http://ciaran.compsoc.com/

Support free software, join FSFE's Fellowship: http://fsfe.org

License for code which generates code

I have a project which takes an input file and generates code from it --
a compile in the *loosest* sense of the word.

I would like that the main code be GPL, but I also want that anybody can
do whatever they want with the generated code (much as how free
compilers tend to work).

How do I go about doing this split licensing?

Some points:
-currently the generated code is source form, not object form perse
-the generated code requires some non-generated dependencies (I guess
those would need to fall under a less restrictive license as well)
-those source dependencies are actually used by the compiler as well
(written in same language as target, PHP for now)

Any help, or some ideas would be appreciated.

--

-- 
edA-qa mort-ora-y
http://disemia.com/
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Have a look in my brain:
	http://brainbrain.eu/
	
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Sign: Please digitally sign your emails.
Encrypt: I'm also happy to receive encrypted mail.

EC to push for 95 year copyright

The EC have made a press release with vague talk of aiding 70 year olds
whose only income is royalties from musical work they did before their 20th
birthday:

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/1156&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Some more info is in Karsten Gerloff's blog:
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/gerloff/blog/ec_has_a_copyright_day_term_extension_green_paper

I wasn't able to tell whether this is specific to music, or whether it would
apply to all copyrights.  Either way, we'll have to develop our arguments
about how copyright is killing culture, hindering education, and interfering
with the public's legitimate use of computers and networks.

Even though the campaigns against copyright extension in the USA were
unsuccessful, at least they should have produced a body of discussion that
we can now draw from in the coming debate here.

--

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan, +32 477 36 44 19, http://ciaran.compsoc.com/

Support free software, join FSFE's Fellowship: http://fsfe.org

Recent blog entries:

http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/using_latex_to_make_pdf_documents_with_japanese_characters
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/links_sean_daly_kde_swpat_chessboxing
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/links_india_pats_clipperz_freegis_rms_emacs
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/using_and_writing_emacs_22_input_methods

July 7th EP committee vote to create traffic snooping

I don't know much about this, but there's a vote on July 7th in the IMCO and
ITRE sub-committees of the European Parliament.  The topic is mandatory
blocking of traffic by ISPs, which also requires mandatory reading of
traffic by ISPs.  I'm not sure I'll have time to dig into this, so please
take a look if you might have time to write an email on this.

The details:
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Telecom-Package_Compromise-Amendments_ITRE-IMCO_7th-July

To get organised:
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Mobilisation_Paquet-Telecom

--

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan, +32 477 36 44 19, http://ciaran.compsoc.com/

Support free software, join FSFE's Fellowship: http://fsfe.org

Recent blog entries:
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/using_and_writing_emacs_22_input_methods
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/openstreetmap_is_doing_great
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/launching_your_favourite_editor_in_firefox
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/updating_debian_keys_for_the_uninterested

Ghost Works survey - Chilling effects of copyright

Howdy all,

The Question Copyright folks are launching a new effort around the
chilling effect of copyright: specifically, the effect of works where
the only thing stopping the work getting out is the cloud of copyright
questions.

They use the term "Ghost Works" for these never-made or never-released
works <URL:http://questioncopyright.org/ghost_works_survey>:

     In the article "Seen Any Ghost Works Lately?", we defined a ghost
     work as a creative work that never got made, or was made but not
     released, because copyright concerns prevented it from being
     started or from being distributed. Since then, informal
     conversations with artists, publishers and others have made it
     very clear that such suppression is a common event, much more
     common than most people think. But the public rarely hears about
     it, because no one does publicity for a work that doesn't exist.

     The purpose of the Ghost Works Survey is twofold: to demonstrate
     the scope and scale of this phenomenon by gathering and
     organizing as much data about it as we can, and to highlight
     compelling individual stories of artists and other creators who
     had their work thwarted by copyright restrictions. The survey
     will not attempt to catalogue every ghost work — there are
     likely far too many, given that almost every artist we've talked
     to so far has a story of a work they had to alter or lay aside
     due to copyright concerns. Rather, we'll focus on qualitative
     results: we want to collect enough stories to discern large-scale
     patterns, so we can understand and publicize the effects of

Things in your computer you do not have the source for

http://mjg59.livejournal.com/91123.html

- d.

The bad FSF

Hello,
I stumbled across this odd article: "All OSS Developers Are Equal, But
Some OSS Developers Are More Equal Than Others!" [1] where the FSF is
criticized for being unfair to software developers and failed to close
the "ASP Loophole".

For the authors of this article, the Affero GPL does not fix the
problem, because "GPL developers won't use it". Well, if so, why
should they switch to any other licence that addresses the problem?

And the accusation of unfairness goes in the same direction. They
blame the FSF to aggressively sue software developers who don't
provide the source code in their distribution, but don't sue google
for benefiting from Free Software without showing their sources.

I don't really see what they want to tell me beside that the FSF is
just a bunch of "extremists" who "deny the value of intellectual
property rights."

I am contemplating to write them, but it's probably not worth it. What
do you think?

[1] http://www.metrocorpcounsel.com/current.php?artType=view&artMonth=May&artYear=2008&EntryNo=8208

Hello,
I stumbled across this odd article: "All OSS Developers Are Equal, But
Some OSS Developers Are More Equal Than Others!" [1] where the FSF is
criticized for being unfair to software developers and failed to close
the "ASP Loophole".