[en] FSFLA News - Issue #18

[Alexandre Oliva]

FSFLA News
Issue #18
January, 2007
http://www.fsfla.org/?q=en/node/131

1. Editorial: Balance of 2006, Perspectives for 2007
2. News and Events
3. Help wanted


1. Editorial: Balance of 2006, Perspectives for 2007

Last year was not as great as we'd hoped, but it was a great year
nevertheless.

By the end of 2005, we were aiming at establishing ourselves
juridically as a foundation in Argentina early in 2006.
Unfortunately, it became clear to us that some circumstances would
prevent us from operating in other Latin American countries,
particularly Brazil, so we had to revisit our plans and our bylaws.
We expect to publish soon a draft constitution for public review.

In late 2006, we unfortunately lost 3 valuable members, just when we
expected to start reaching out to other Latin-American countries, with
the (GNU)^2 initiative.  This setback has slowed us down significantly
while we redistributed our efforts and started looking for new
members.

Our campaign against DRM, Entertained and Controlled, hasn't been
launched yet.  Even though the workgroup has come up with a great name
and a great logo, and offered us the domain names, we need more
volunteer work to set up the campaign web site and to create content
for it.

Although we had some big setbacks, we've also collected many
successes.

We've also been invited more and more often to speak about Free
Software at conferences, and we've experienced growing interest in
FSFLA's opinions in the news, both inside and outside Latin America.
We spoke at most of the International GPLv3 Conference, having
successfully organized one of them.

(GNU)^2 is picking up, even if slowly, but we already observe a
significant growth in the number of people from several countries
interested in participating in FSFLA and helping it grow and become
stronger in this new stage of its history.

The campaign against "Softwares Impostos" in Brazil has reportedly
been listened to and generated a lot of goodwill for the Free Software
cause in various departments in the Brazilian federal government.
Although no concrete actions have gone public yet, we expect major
developments throughout the next few years in Brazil in this front,
and we hope volunteers from other Latin American countries will help
us line up similar campaigns in other countries.

We've got our first (informal) participation in a lawsuit in Brazil,
when IBDI (Brazilian Institute of Politics and Law on Informatics) was
formally accepted as Amicus Curiæ, taking FSFLA's voice to the court.
As we establish juridic existence for FSFLA, expected in early 2007,
we may get more direct participation in legal actions.

We intend to make progress on our ongoing campaigns, and to start or
get involved in others.

We will keep on publishing articles on themes relevant to Free
Software: there are two nearly ready, one on DRM, one on GPLv3.  We
hope to keep on being invited to conferences and publications to
spread the word on Free Software, to defend users' and developers'
freedoms regarding software, and to have more people on board and on
more Latin American countries to pursue our mission.

If you'd like to help us to this end, join our mailing lists,
introduce yourself, display consistent commitment, interest and
participation, making yourself known to other volunteers, particularly
board members, and you may eventually become a workgroup leader, a
board observer and, if everything works out fine, a board member.

We thank all those that have supported us, helped us and donated time,
effort and money to us.

We have no doubt that 2007 is going to be a great year for Free
Software.  Nevertheless, there are going to be great challenges, and
FSFLA shall live up to them.

Happy GNU Year!


2. News and Events

Alexandre Oliva presented two virtual lectures at UMeet 2006.  
http://umeet.uninet.edu/umeet2006/english/prog.html has the logs.

He will participate in a panel on Free Software and DRM at SENID
(National Digital Inclusion Seminar) as part of UNE's (National
Students Union in Brazil) Biennial Conference, from January 28 to
February 1st, 2007, in Rio de Janeiro.
http://livre.une.org.br/ (in Portuguese) shall soon have the details.
The official conference web site unfortunately requires and recommends
proprietary software.

Fernanda G. Weiden and Alexandre Oliva published the article "DRM:
Defectis Repleta Machina" in the December issue of the on-line
magazine ComCiência.  The article is being reworked into an official
FSFLA statement for the Anti-DRM campaign Entertained and Controlled.
http://www.comciencia.br/comciencia/handler.php?section=8&edicao=20&id=216
(in Portuguese)

In the same issue of ComCiência, an interview with Pedro A. D. Rezende
covered Internet control, DRM and electronic voting.
http://www.comciencia.br/comciencia/handler.php?section=8&tipo=entrevista&edicao=20
(in Portuguese)

FSFLA had a say in a news report about the revision of LPG-AP, a
software license created for the Brazilian state of Paraná.
http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/06/11/27/1756206.shtml?tid=147&tid=150

We thank the Argentinian magazine "Users Linux" for republishing some
of our editorials, even if their magazine title calls the GNU
operating system by the wrong name, and Franco Iacomella for having
arranged it.  We reaffirm the permission for anyone to republish our
editorials, newsletters and articles, as per the policy set out in our
web site.


3. Help wanted

FSFLA depends on voluntary work from Free Software enthusiasts.  If
you can and want to help, please join our workgroups listed at
http://www.fsfla.org/?q=en/node/121.  If you'd prefer to work on
another workgroup we haven't set up yet, please bring it up at
discusion at fsfla.org.


Copyright 2007 FSFLA

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
entire document without royalty provided the copyright notice, the
document's official URL, and this permission notice are preserved.

Permission is also granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
individual sections of this document without royalty provided the
copyright notice and the permission notice above are preserved, and
the document's official URL is preserved or replaced by the individual
section's official URL.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva