Richard Stallman in Brasil
Thu Nov 29 18:09:43 2012
Richard Stallman in Brazil
Brazil, November, 2012—Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software social and political movement, again honors us with his presence in Latin America, this time in Brazil. The event that brings him to the region is CONSEGI, the Free Software and Electronic Government International Congress, that this year will take place in Belém, Pará, from December 3 to 7. Thanks to support by CONSEGI organizers and sponsors, we could schedule, in Goiás, in the Federal District, and in São Paulo, other speeches by the president of our sister organization, the original Free Software Foundation (FSF). The speeches are all non-technical and open to the general public; for some, prior registration is required.
At Fórum Goiano de Software Livre, in Goiânia, Goiás, from November 30 to December 1st, he will speak on both event days, about GPLv3 and the Free Software Movement.
http://fgsl.aslgo.org.br/
At the University of Brasília, in the Federal District, he will speak on December 3rd about the dangers of software patents.
http://www.cic.unb.br/~pedro/trabs/stallman.html
His speech at CONSEGI is scheduled for December 6th.
http://www.consegi.gov.br/
On the 11th, he will deliver the speech “A Free Digital Society” at the São Carlos campus of the University of São Paulo.
http://ccsl.icmc.usp.br/pt-br/news/palestra-stallman-icmc
On December 12th, he will speak about Free Software at the Sorocaba Campus of the Federal University of São Carlos.
http://www.fsfla.org/redir/20121212-rms-sorocaba
We thank the local organizers of each of these events and extend their invitation for participation in these and other speeches by Richard Stallman, always announced at FSF's events page.
http://www.fsf.org/events/
Update 2012-12-11
Adding to Richard Stallman's public appointments this week, after the previously announced speeches in São Carlos and Sorocaba, Solidarius International takes him to Curitiba, Paraná, to speak about the Free Software Movement, on December 13, at the Federal University of Paraná.
http://softwarelivre.org/curitibalivre/blog/palestra-stallman-ufpr
About the Free Software Movement
The Free Software Movement promotes software freedom to computer users, to avoid control and subjugation of users through the programs they use. DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) and artificial impediments to the use, sharing and modification of programs are symptoms of this social problem, fought through informative campaigns, political activism and development of Free Software, such as the GNU operating system and the GNU Linux-libre kernel.
About the Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of Free (as in freedom) Software—particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants—and Free documentation for Free Software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at http://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.
http://www.fsf.org/
About FSFLA
Free Software Foundation Latin America joined in 2005 the international FSF network, previously formed by Free Software Foundations in the United States, in Europe and in India. These sister organizations work in their corresponding geographies towards promoting the same Free Software ideals and defending the same freedoms for software users and developers, working locally but cooperating globally.
http://www.fsfla.org/
About Free Software and Open Source
The Free Software Movement's goal is freedom for computer users. Some, especially corporations, advocate a different viewpoint, known as “open source,” which cites only practical goals such as making software powerful and reliable, focuses on development models, and avoids discussion of ethics and freedom. These two viewpoints are different at the deepest level.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
About the GNU Operating System and Linux
Richard Stallman announced in September 1983 the plan to develop a Free Software Unix-like operating system called GNU. GNU is the only operating system developed specifically for the sake of users' freedom.
http://www.gnu.org/
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html
In 1992, the essential components of GNU were complete, except for one, the kernel. When in 1992 the kernel Linux was re-released under the GNU GPL, making it Free Software, the combination of GNU and Linux formed a complete Free operating system, which made it possible for the first time to run a PC without non-Free Software. This combination is the GNU/Linux system.
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html
About GNU Linux-libre
GNU Linux-libre is a project maintained since 2007 by FSFLA to publish Free version of the kernel Linux, that in 1996 ceased to be entirely Free. They're adequate for users who don't wish to give up their freedoms and for distributions that don't wish to induce their users to this harmful behavior.
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/
http://www.gnu.org/distros/
Copyright 2012 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 worldwide 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.
Access to the Source Code of Imposed Tax Software
Mon Oct 15 11:32:18 2012
Access to the Source Code of Imposed Tax Software
Brazil, October 2012–Receita Federal do Brasil (RFB for short), the Brazilian public administration office in charge of federal taxes, has ignored for years its obligations of transparency and of respecting taxpayers' software freedom. However, because of a recent federal law that sets deadlines for them to respond to citizens' requests for information, and penalties if they don't, they resort to lies and distortions to avoid public scrutiny and to impose their anti-democratic policy.
Since 2008, RFB has been subject to federal regulations that require the product of software development contracts to be published in the Brazilian Public [Free] Software Portal, licensed under the GNU GPL. Their contract with SERPRO (the Federal Data Processing Service), to develop several programs that RFB publishes on its web site for taxpayers to fill in and submit tax returns and other forms, should comply with the obligations established in this regulation, but RFB prefers to pretend the regulation “does not apply to these programs, because they do not meet the requirements to be published in the Portal,” as if their refusal to meet the requirements excused the non-compliance with the obligations.
As of May 2012, a new law that regulates the constitutional right to access to public information came into effect, enabling citizens to request and obtain information from public officials within specific time frames. On the first day, two requests for access to the source code of income tax form-filling software were filed on a web site maintained by the federal government.
Professor Jorge Machado, from University of São Paulo's Access to Information Public Policies Research Group, got a response stating that the source code of the requested program contained information protected by fiscal privacy, that therefore could not be divulged. Alexandre Oliva, from FSF Latin America, got a response several weeks after the deadline, with a significantly different argument: the source code “does not contain, per se, third-party economic-financial information,” but “evidence about security rules of the institution, that would increase significantly the risk of unauthorized access to the systems that receive and validate files sent to this organization, exposing to vulnerabilities all the private information in the databases it guards.”
Laymen in information security science might regard this revised statement as credible, except for a small detail: we have obtained, through reverse engineering, and published, several years ago, the source code of one of these programs. We know it contains no information that could raise the risk of unauthorized access to the systems or databases containing fiscal information: it doesn't even interact with such systems or databases.
SERPRO, that not only develops and publishes the requested programs, but also develops and maintains the databases and the reception and validation systems, confirmed that “the source code contains no such information,” that this assertion applies to all programs they have developed and made available to third parties, and that “there wouldn't be any technical justification to make the mistake” of including such sensitive information in these programs.
Why, of course! Since the source code has been public since April, 2007 and both RFB and SERPRO knew it, anything in it that could have exposed to vulnerabilities the databases with fiscal information would have demanded immediate action to patch the security issues. According to SERPRO, no such action was taken. After all, there was no need for any.
RFB, on its turn, does not even acknowledge that, if they couldn't publish the source code for security reasons but they took no action upon knowing it was published, it would follow that they have been negligent for years in protecting fiscal privacy. But in order to sustain their authoritarian, antidemocratic and unlawful policy that “all source code of its ownership [sic] must be safeguarded” because of its alleged “effective potential to reduce security,” they won't retract their lie, or they'd lose their only remaining argument against publishing the programs that ought to be Public Free Software.
Fortunately for all Brazilians, SERPRO has disclaimed RFB's lie, so if RFB higher officials do not act on this matter out of their own will, the justice system or other government agencies in charge of enforcing compliance with the mandate of transparency by default ought to demand them to do so. While they don't, we keep on pressing RFB with requests for information that challenge and contradict their lie.
While they insist on it, we get further evidence for future lawsuits to set them straight, even if with a slim hope they will retract the lie and publish the requested source code. Meanwhile, we realized SERPRO is just as required as RFB to publish the source code in their possession, so we've now filed a request for SERPRO to publish the source code of some of the programs.
http://www.fsfla.org/blogs/lxo/2012-10-10-IRPF-LAI (in Portuguese)
When either of them do, we'll have further evidence for the future lawsuits, and we'll be much closer to meeting the first goal set for our campaign against Softwares Impostos in Brazil. The source code will probably still be proprietary if SERPRO publishes it, but its availability will counter the authoritarian reasoning that alleges a need for secrecy, so going from that to Free Software shouldn't take long: the law that requires the software to be published under the GNU GPL on the Public [Free] Software Portal is on our side for the final step too.
About FSFLA's Campaign against Imposed/Tax Software
We understand the Brazilian law, particularly the Federal Constitution, grant preference to Free Software in the public administration, both internally, for compliance with constitutional principles, and in interactions with citizens, for respect for their fundamental constitutional rights and for compliance with the same and other constitutional principles.
This campaign, started in October, 2006, seeks to educate public administration managers about these obligations that are beneficial both to citizens and to the public administration itself, such that they pay attention not only to compliance with the law, but also to respect for citizens and for digital freedom.
http://www.fsfla.org/blogs/lxo/pub/o-software-era-a-lei (in Portuguese)
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2011-04-IRPF-Livre-2011
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2010-03-IRPF-Livre-2010
http://www.fsfla.org/blogs/lxo/pub/misterios-de-eleusis (in Portuguese)
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2009-04-softimp-irpf-livre-2009
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2008-04-softimp-irpf-livre-2008
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2008-02-softimp-irpf2008
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2007-09#1
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2007-04#3
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2007-03-irpf2007 (in Portuguese)
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2007-03#1
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2006-11#Editorial
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2006-10-softimp
About IRPF-Livre
It's a software development project to prepare Natural Person's Income Tax returns in the standards defined by the Brazilian Receita Federal, but without the technical and legal insecurity imposed by it.
IRPF-Livre is Free Software, that is, software that respects users' freedom to run it for any purpose, to study its source code and adapt it to their needs, and to distribute copies, modified or not.
The program can be obtained, both in source and Java object code forms at the following location:
http://www.fsfla.org/~lxoliva/fsfla/irpf-livre/
About FSFLA's “Be Free!” Initiative
It's a project to renew the original goals of the Free Software Movement: not just promote Free Software itself, but rather Software Freedom, achieved by a user only when all the software s/he uses is Free Software.
http://www.fsfla.org/befree/
To make this goal achievable, besides awareness campaigns and speeches and the activities against “Imposed/Tax Software,” FSFLA has maintained GNU Linux-Libre, a project to set and keep Free the non-Free kernel Linux, most used along with the Free operating system GNU.
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/
http://www.gnu.org/distros/
About FSFLA
Free Software Foundation Latin America joined in 2005 the international FSF network, previously formed by Free Software Foundations in the United States, in Europe and in India. These sister organizations work in their corresponding geographies towards promoting the same Free Software ideals and defending the same freedoms for software users and developers, working locally but cooperating globally.
http://www.fsfla.org/
Press contacts
Alexandre Oliva
Board member, FSFLA
lxoliva@fsfla.org
+55 19 9714-3658 / 3243-5233
Copyright 2012 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 worldwide 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.
IRPF-Livre 2011: Death and Taxes
Mon Apr 25 19:54:12 2011
IRPF-Livre 2011: Death and Taxes
Brazil, April 25, 2011—Last week, billions of people around the world celebrated their faith on a Nazarene liberator and his miraculous victory over death. On the 21st, Brazil also remembered the death of Tiradentes, martyr for the country's independence, who survived only in memories and in history books. Our gift, hereby announced, doesn't contain Easter Eggs, that symbolize rebirth, resurrection or the creativity of computer programmers, but it has to do with one of the two certainties in life. Although it doesn't avoid death, it enables escaping from an unfair tax charged by the Brazilian government in the form of freedom. We offer IRPF-Livre, 2011 version, a Free alternative to the illegally privative software imposed on Brazilian taxpayers to prepare their annual Income Tax returns (IRPF).
http://www.fsfla.org/~lxoliva/snapshots/irpf-livre/2011/
IRPF-Livre, that we have maintained since 2007 as part of our campaign against the deprivation of freedom by governments through Imposed/Tax Software, was updated in accordance with changes in legislation and the undocumented file formats required by Receita Federal do Brasil (RFB).
Although RFB has fixed some of the copyright violations over Free Software libraries that we pointed out in earlier versions of its privative IRPF2011, the imposition of this software amounts to failing to respect not only citizens, but also recent regulations.
Specifically, Normative Instruction (IN) 04/2008/SLTI, effective since January, 2009, demands from public administration, in its article 21, that “software resulting from development services must be [...] published at the Brazilian Public Software Portal.”
http://www.comprasnet.gov.br/legislacao/in/in04_08.htm (in Portuguese)
Furthermore, IN 01/2011/SLTI, effective since January, 2011, regulates how software is to be published at this portal, demanding in article 4 that source code be made available and in article 7 the licensing under free licenses, so far only GNU GPL, and prohibiting, in article 5, the use of privative components.
http://www.softwarepublico.gov.br/spb/download/file/in_spb_01.pdf (in Portuguese)
RFB did not publish IRPF2011 at the portal, it didn't offer source code, it granted a privative license instead of GNU GPL, and it used privative components, some developed by the company hired to perform the services, others offered by third parties as Free Software, but potentially turned privative by not offering the possibly modified corresponding source code.
To preserve Brazilian taxpayers' freedoms and defend them from the illegality of the software imposed by RFB, we recommend the use of IRPF-Livre 2011. On the other hand, we request RFB, the Public Ministry and the Union Account Court to pursue the correction of this irregularities that have deprived citizens from essential freedoms and rights guaranteed by the aforementioned INs. These norms determine freedom or death to imposed software.
About IRPF-Livre
It's a software development project to prepare Natural Person's Income Tax returns in the standards defined by the Brazilian Receita Federal, but without the technical and legal insecurity imposed by it.
IRPF-Livre is Free Software, that is, software that respects users' freedom to run it for any purpose, to study its source code and adapt it to their needs, and to distribute copies, modified or not.
The program can be obtained, both in source and Java object code forms at the following location:
http://www.fsfla.org/~lxoliva/fsfla/irpf-livre/2011/
About FSFLA's Campaign against Imposed/Tax Software
We understand the Brazilian law, particularly the Federal Constitution, grant preference to Free Software in the public administration, both internally, for compliance with constitutional principles, and in interactions with citizens, for respect for their fundamental constitutional rights and for compliance with the same and other constitutional principles.
This campaign, started in October, 2006, seeks to educate public administration managers about these obligations that are beneficial both to citizens and to the public administration itself, such that they pay attention not only to compliance with the law, but also to respect for citizens and for digital freedom.
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2010-03-IRPF-Livre-2010
http://www.fsfla.org/blogs/lxo/pub/misterios-de-eleusis (in Portuguese)
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2009-04-softimp-irpf-livre-2009
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2008-04-softimp-irpf-livre-2008
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2008-02-softimp-irpf2008
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2007-09#1
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2007-04#3
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2007-03-irpf2007 (in Portuguese)
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2007-03#1
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2006-11#Editorial
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2006-10-softimp
About FSFLA's “Be Free!” Initiative
It's a project to renew the original goals of the Free Software Movement: not just promote Free Software itself, but rather Software Freedom, achieved by a user only when all the software s/he uses is Free Software.
http://www.fsfla.org/befree/
To make this goal achievable, besides awareness campaigns and speeches and the activities against “Imposed/Tax Software”, FSFLA has maintained Linux-Libre, a project to set and keep Free the non-Free kernel Linux, most used along with the Free operating system GNU.
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/
http://www.gnu.org/distros/
About FSFLA
Free Software Foundation Latin America joined in 2005 the international FSF network, previously formed by Free Software Foundations in the United States, in Europe and in India. These sister organizations work in their corresponding geographies towards promoting the same Free Software ideals and defending the same freedoms for software users and developers, working locally but cooperating globally.
http://www.fsfla.org/
Press contacts
Alexandre Oliva
Board member, FSFLA
lxoliva@fsfla.org
+55 19 9714-3658 / 3243-5233
+55 61 4063-9714
Copyright 2011 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 worldwide 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.
FSFLA's petition for Canaima GNU/Linux to be Free
Tue Dec 7 10:11:30 2010
FSFLA's petition for Canaima GNU/Linux to be Free
The Venezuelan Presidential Decree 3390, specifically in articles 2 and 7, explains and backs up the reasons why the Venezuelan state should develop a Free Software distribution. Canaima GNU/Linux is this distribution, so it ought to be a Free distribution, without parts that threaten its users' freedoms.
http://www.gobiernoenlinea.ve/docMgr/sharedfiles/Decreto3390.pdf
Some institutions have computers with devices that cannot work without privative drivers and “firmwares”. In the long term, they ought to be replaced, but in the short term there will be wishes to install these drivers so as to use them, as if it was normal to include them, without any warning, and as if they didn't amount to any problem or danger.
Canaima GNU/Linux ought to resist the temptation to include these programs in its base distribution and in its future versions. Specially, it ought to avoid at all costs including them as if they were normal and acceptable, for this amounts to legitimizing and accepting them submissively, without actual plans or explicit intentions to avoid this dependency. There are regulations that will require that computers purchased or produced by the Venezuelan state be capable of working with Canaima GNU/Linux. If Canaima GNU/Linux includes privative drivers, it will enable the purchase of far more hardware that demands Privative Software to work, preventing the achievement of our dreamed Technological Sovereignty.
If an institution, for hardware already acquired, requires privative parts to be able to use these devices, then it will have to name and install these parts, optionally and with notification on the documents generated in the process, as established in Presidential Decree 3390. Privative Software is a problem, and not offering resistance amounts to losing many past achievements.
Accepting Privative Software amounts to making entire institutions dependent on the wishes of a business or a small group of people. It's carrying on in the Privative model.
If Privative Software is integrated with Canaima GNU/Linux, we hope it isn't with conscientious acceptance by the project, but rather with the regret and the consciousness of losing Technological Sovereignty, depriving ourselves of our freedom to learn in informatics, and to be able to improve these technologies. Besides, many times nothing can be done with them without approval and blessing from the developers of these privative parts.
Using Privative Software (in any amount) risks the stability and the operation of any system, including the defense ones. A tiny privative program can easily spy on, delete or copy information in such a way that the user cannot realize it.
Finally, regarding the “freedom” to choose Free Software or Privative Software in order to be free: it is possible to accept that someone else controls your computer. It is usual to see those who agree that someone else makes the decisions on their computers, spy on them or deny them some features, in addition to preventing studying and improving its software, for sure. It is true that they can choose to use Privative Software. We know it and we understand it, though with much disappointment, for it is unfortunate that someone wants to choose this option. What we do about this is not to force them or make them reject Privative Software: we notify them that by taking this action (which is not a freedom, neither in fact nor by law) they lose many actual freedoms, of the most important kind, of the kind that affects entire countries and peoples.
About FSFLA
Free Software Foundation Latin America joined in 2005 the international FSF network, previously formed by Free Software Foundations in the United States, in Europe and in India. These sister organizations work in their corresponding geographies towards promoting the same Free Software ideals and defending the same freedoms for software users and developers, working locally but cooperating globally.
http://www.fsfla.org/
Copyright 2010 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 worldwide 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.
Linux-2.6.36-libre: turning Linux's Free Bait into Free Software
Mon Nov 8 10:43:49 2010
Linux-2.6.36-libre: turning Linux's Free Bait into Free Software
Cyberspace, November 8, 2010—Linux hasn't got any Freer between the Linux-2.6.33-libre announcement, back in March, and the present announcement, that marks the release of Linux-2.6.36-libre. Linux now contains more non-Free Software, and more drivers in its Free core that require separately distributed non-Free Software to function. The welcome news is that Open Source advocates have joined the Free Software Movement in denouncing the practice of Free Bait or Open Core.
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2010-03-Linux-2.6.33-libre
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/releases/LATEST-2.6.36.0/
OSI director Simon Phipps writes “Open Core Is Bad For You”, “it's a game on software freedom”, “it's a bait-and-switch, wrapping the same old lock-in in the flag of open source and hoping you won't notice.” Bait-and-switch is a deceptive commercial practice in which one product is announced to attract customers, to sell another instead.
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/06/open-core-is-bad-for-you/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_and_switch
OSI director Andrew C. Oliver adds that “Open Core puts the software user at a disadvantage in the same way that all proprietary software puts the user at a disadvantage”, it “is merely a nick-name for a proprietary software company”, and those who imply their “proprietary software is open source or has the advantages of open source are engaging in deception.”
http://www.opensource.org/blog/OpenCore
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100704191126134
This agreement between the Free Software movement Freedom campaign and Open Source spokespeople on a matter of principle signals the importance of denouncing this practice. However, most of our community is not aware that Linux has this problem. The most popular GNU+Linux distributions, and most of their user groups, downplay the problem of non-Free parts of Linux.
Free Bait, or Open Core as first coined by Andrew Lampitt, is a licensing strategy that combines Free and non-Free Software: the distributor offers, under non-Free terms, premium features that are not available in the Free, typically copyleft, core. The original definition, presented in the context of deriving benefits such as profit or code contributions, may appear confusing because it conflates non-Free with commercial, but Free Bait does not mean selling additional permissions to the same code, letting others offer non-Free extensions, or offering Free extensions to paying customers. Rather, it means that a community member or distributor of the Free core also offers non-Free extensions to go with it.
http://alampitt.typepad.com/lampitt_or_leave_it/2008/08/open-core-licen.html
http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2010/10/20/what-is-open-core-licensing-and-what-isnt/
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions
Sad to say, Linux fits the definition of Free Bait or Open Core. Many believe that Linux is Free Software or Open Source, but it isn't. Indeed, the Linux-2.6.36 distribution published by Mr. Torvalds contains sourceless code under such restrictive licensing terms as “This material is licensed to you strictly for use in conjunction with the use of COPS LocalTalk adapters”, presented as a list of numbers in the corresponding driver, and “This firmware may not be modified and may only be used with Keyspan hardware” and “Derived from proprietary unpublished source code, Copyright Broadcom” in the firmware subdirectory, just to name a few examples.
Although the corresponding drivers are part of the Free and GPLed core, the features they are meant to provide will only be available to users that accept the non-Free code that Mr. Torvalds redistributes. The drivers work as bait, luring users into accepting the deprivation of essential freedoms over the corresponding non-Free Software.
Most GNU+Linux distributions follow the same practice: they include other freedom-denying programs beyond the kernel Linux, while continuing to associate themselves with the terms Free Software or Open Source.
Even if they, Linux included, remove all these non-Free programs, as long as they keep software or documentation that induces users to seek and use non-Free programs, they're still bait.
Please join us in bringing these problems to users' attention, and also in informing users about the various Free GNU+Linux distros and Linux-libre, our Free version of the kernel Linux. Available since October 21, Linux-2.6.36-libre is Bait-free Free Software; Linux and GNU+Linux can be de-baited and Free again, if we work together at it.
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/
http://www.gnu.org/distros/
http://www.fsf.org/working-together/
About Linux-libre
Linux-libre is a project maintained by FSFLA, that releases cleaned-up versions of Linux, suitable for use in distributions that comply with the Free Software Distribution Guidelines published by the GNU project, and by users who wish to run Free versions of Linux on their GNU systems. The project offers cleaning-up scripts and Free sources, binaries for some Free GNU/Linux-libre distributions, binaries to replace with minimal changes the kernels in non-Free GNU/Linux distributions: Freed-ebian and Freed-ora, and artwork with GNU and the Linux-libre mascot: Freedo, the clean, Free and user-friendly light-blue penguin. Visit our web site and Be Free!
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/
http://www.gnu.org/distros/
About FSFLA
Free Software Foundation Latin America joined in 2005 the international FSF network, previously formed by Free Software Foundations in the United States, in Europe and in India. These sister organizations work in their corresponding geographies towards promoting the same Free Software ideals and defending the same freedoms for software users and developers, working locally but cooperating globally.
http://www.fsfla.org/
Copyright 2010 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 worldwide 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.
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2010-11-Linux-2.6.36-libre-debait
IRPF-Livre 2010: Free as Always, Sooner than Ever
Mon Mar 1 06:03:55 2010
IRPF-Livre 2010: Free as Always, Sooner than Ever
Brazil, March 1st, 2010—It's with great pleasure that we announce the release of the 2010 version of IRPF-Livre, a Free implementation of the program to generate natural people's income tax returns. For the first time since we started the campaign against “Imposed/Tax Software” (“Softwares Impostos”), in 2006, we publish the Free version before Receita Federal publishes the proprietary one, that it traditionally publishes in flagrant disrespect for essential freedoms and fundamental constitutional rights of Brazilian citizens and taxpayers.
Campaign Against Imposed/Tax Software
More than 3 years ago, FSFLA launched a campaign against Imposed/Tax Software, with focus on Receita Federal's income tax programs and the authentication applet for Internet access to Banco do Brasil's accounts, two proprietary programs unjustly imposed on millions of citizens by organizations under control of the Brazilian federal government.
Banco do Brasil recently dropped the requirement for that program, but introduced a new one: a new proprietary program, less visible, more dangerous and not effective: browsers that identify themselves as a specific brand of proprietary cell phones are relieved from this demand, a trick that can be easily abused by spy sites or programs that stand in the middle and use this identification, or that simply display similar pages to capture passwords.
Several security and cybercrime experts recommend the use of a GNU/Linux Live CD to access banks. Banco do Brasil itself uses this operating system in pretty much all of its computers, from ATMs to mainframes. It could easily extend this benefit to its customers, offering them a fully Free, customized and secure version of this system for Internet banking, to run independently from the operating system installed on the computer, or on a virtual machine. The presence of digital certificates and preselected access links, along with the impossibility for malicious software to modify the system, would do away with several supposedly-security measures, that today weaken the security for those who use already robust systems.
As for Receita Federal and its proprietary program, IRPF, the nearly-secret formats that it uses to store tax returns, as well as the secret protocols it uses to transfer them, demand citizens to blindly give up to Receita Federal, or to third parties, control over their computers and data stored in them. The way Receita Federal adopted to distribute the program permits in-flight tampering. Without means to authenticate the origin of the program, or to inspect its behavior, users are subject to leaks of the highly personal information in the tax returns, as well as of other data stored in the computer. They can't even reassure themselves that the filled-in forms contain the intended information, or that they are transmitted, without tampering, only to Receita Federal, or even verify that the receipt was issued by Receita Federal.
If Receita Federal published the programs as Free Software, with authentication of origin through digital signatures, these problems would be solved, without introducing new ones. Whoever attempted to cheat the system tampering with the computations would find out, receiving a notification of attempted fraud, that the system that receives and processes the tax returns performs all the verifications.
Although laymen in information sciences are often fooled by the myth of security through obscurity (“close your eyes and trust me”), experts in the subject expose the myth, casting serious doubts on the competence or the honesty of those who impose blind trust:
“Security through obfuscation and secrecy is not security. Fully disclosed source code is the path to true transparency and confidence in the voting process for all involved.” — Eric D. Coomer, PhD, Vice President of Research and Product Development at Sequoia Voting Systems.
http://www.sequoiavote.com/press.php?ID=85
Voting systems have far more complex security demands than banking and fiscal ones, so complex that they can't ever do without recording of votes on paper. Nevertheless, they can achieve security without giving up transparency. Popular myths do not grant simpler systems authority to disrespect transparency or to take control of citizens' computers and expose them to threats.
IRPF-Livre
Given Receita Federal's reluctance in respecting taxpayers and the Federal Constitution, we started in 2007 a project to offer taxpayer a Free program to prepare the tax returns that have to be turned in annually to Brazilian tax authorities.
The program was based on IRPF2007, published under a Free Software license, but without the source code needed for it to be Free Software. Without source code, there isn't freedom to study, adapt or improve the program. Using reverse engineering tools, we could obtain source code and adapt the program to work on Free Java virtual machines. Receita Federal changed the license in later versions, so, instead of adopting the same procedure as in 2007, we have updated the program, in accordance with changes to law and the file formats adopted by newer versions.
IRPF-Livre 2010, that we now unleash, performs computations and generates tax returns files identical to those produced by the test version of IRPF 2010, released by Receita Federal in January, reconfigured as a final version, to permit saving files.
In general, between the testing and final versions, there aren't changes in file formats or computations determined by law, so we are confident that the program we published will be useful for the preparation, without the use of any proprietary software, of natural people's income tax returns to be turned in, on diskettes or pen drives, at Receita Federal's, Banco do Brasil's and Caixa Econômica Federal's offices.
However, if there are changes, newer compatible versions, that will be able to use declarations prepared with the just-published version, will be released at the same location, where instructions to install and run the program can also be found:
http://fsfla.org/~lxoliva/fsfla/irpf-livre/2010/
Be Free!
About FSFLA's Campaign against Imposed/Tax Software
We understand the Brazilian law, particularly the Federal Constitution, grant preference to Free Software in the public administration, both internally, for compliance with constitutional principles, and in interactions with citizens, for respect for their fundamental constitutional rights and for compliance with the same and other constitutional principles.
This campaign, started in October, 2006, seeks to educate public administration managers about these obligations that are beneficial both to citizens and to the public administration itself, such that they pay attention not only to compliance with the law, but also to respect for citizens and for digital freedom.
http://www.fsfla.org/blogs/lxo/pub/misterios-de-eleusis (in Portuguese)
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2009-04-softimp-irpf-livre-2009
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2008-04-softimp-irpf-livre-2008
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2008-02-softimp-irpf2008
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2007-09#1
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2007-04#3
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2007-03-irpf2007 (in Portuguese)
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2007-03#1
http://www.fsfla.org/circular/2006-11#Editorial
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2006-10-softimp
About FSFLA's “Be Free!” Initiative
It's a project to renew the original goals of the Free Software Movement: not just promote Free Software itself, but rather Software Freedom, achieved by a user only when all the software s/he uses is Free Software.
http://www.fsfla.org/befree/
To make this goal achievable, besides awareness campaigns and speeches and the activities against “Imposed/Tax Software”, FSFLA has maintained Linux-Libre, a project to set and keep Free the non-Free kernel Linux, most used along with the Free operating system GNU.
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/
http://www.gnu.org/distros/
About FSFLA
Free Software Foundation Latin America joined in 2005 the international FSF network, previously formed by Free Software Foundations in the United States, in Europe and in India. These sister organizations work in their corresponding geographies towards promoting the same Free Software ideals and defending the same freedoms for software users and developers, working locally but cooperating globally.
http://www.fsfla.org/
Press contacts
Alexandre Oliva
Board member, FSFLA
lxoliva@fsfla.org
+55 19 9714-3658 / 3243-5233
+55 61 4063-9714
Copyright 2010 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 worldwide 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.
Take your freedom back, with Linux-2.6.33-libre
Mon Mar 1 06:03:55 2010
Take your freedom back, with Linux-2.6.33-libre
Cyberspace, March 1st, 2010—Linux hasn't been Free Software since 1996, when Mr Torvalds accepted the first pieces of non-Free Software in the distributions of Linux he has published since 1991. Over these years, while this kernel grew by a factor of 14, the amount of non-Free firmware required by Linux drivers grew by an alarming factor of 83. We, Free Software users, need to join forces to reverse this trend, and part of the solution is Linux-libre, whose release 2.6.33-libre was recently published by FSFLA, bringing with it freedom, major improvements and plans for the future.
History
All firmware in Linux-1.3.0 was Free Software. Whatever little relevance the GNU/Linux operating system had back in 1995 was enough for a few hardware vendors to disclose the details of their hardware or even offer all the software needed to make it work under terms that respected users' essential freedoms. They knew Linux, already licensed under the GNU GPLv2, wouldn't have drivers for their components otherwise.
Over the year that followed, Mr Torvalds changed his stance, and started accepting binary-only firmware in Linux. Because of this decision, GNU/Linux ceased to be an incentive for hardware vendors to respect users' essential freedoms. Since the Linux developers forfeited the defenses provided by the GPL, nearly all of the vendors decided to keep only to themselves the control over the ever-growing computers that passed for peripherals.
Some 143KB of object code disguised as source code were present in the 4.7MB compressed tarball of Linux-2.0, released in June, 1996. Some 6 years later, there were 1.3MB of non-Free firmware hiding in the 26MB compressed tarball of Linux-2.4.19. In Linux-2.6.33, all of these pieces and them some, adding up to 2MB, lie in a subtree created some two years ago to hold firmware in Linux. Another 650KB still disguised as sources were recently added to the staging subtree, and another 9.2MB (duplicates removed) live in a separate archive, created to eventually replace the firmware subtree in Linux.
Perspective
The largest single piece of non-Free firmware in the linux-firmware repository weights 1.25MB today. In the 1980s, half as many bytes were held as enough memory for any application in a personal computer. It was then that Richard Stallman started working on GNU, when entire operating systems were smaller than that. He realized that users should be entitled to the four essential freedoms over all the software that ran on computers, even when they were far less powerful than today's peripherals.
We have achieved that, a Free operating system for general-purpose personal computers, but it lasted for only a few years. The kernel that provided the piece that was missing in the GNU operating system hasn't been Free Software for more than a decade, and it requests users to install a growing number of non-Free programs that are not included in it.
Progress
We welcome, applaud and thank the various recent efforts that resulted in Free firmware for various devices: Atheros contributed Free firmware for its ar5k and ar9k wireless networking cards; experts in reverse engineering developed Free firmware for some of Broadcom's b43 wireless networking cards; others developed the Free nouveau driver for nVidia video cards, and, more recently, completed the task with Free firmware for them, unfortunately a bit too late for the final pieces to make Linux-2.6.33.
However, just like RMS, we realized that developing Free Software isn't enough to establish freedom for the users of GNU/Linux. We also need to educate them to value their freedom, and to recognize and reject non-Free Software. Otherwise, the products that require users to give up their freedom would continue to find willing customers.
A few years ago, the Free Software community realized that Linux was no longer Free Software, and started various efforts to fix this problem. One of them, born nameless within gNewSense, was named Linux-libre within BLAG. Once we took responsibility for it, in addition to removing the non-Free components from Linux, we replace the requests for non-Free firmware with messages that inform users that the hardware in question is a trap.
Our hope is that more users will use this Free version of Linux, present in various GNU/Linux-libre distributions, to find out about hardware components that do not respect their freedoms, then tell vendors how unhappy they are, and use their freedom and power of choice to support vendors that do respect their customers.
Large businesses, governments or lots of users working together, applying a little pressure at the right spot of vendors' pockets, can often get them to change their minds and voluntarily respect customers' freedom. Failing that, we can still help, participating in or funding reverse engineering efforts. The manufacturers that voluntarily respect our freedom deserve the most appreciation, but a product that works in freedom despite the efforts of the manufacturer is much better than nothing.
What's new in Linux-2.6.33-libre
We don't maintain the Linux-libre source files directly. Instead we maintain “deblobbing” scripts that clean Linux “sources”, thus producing Linux-libre sources. The main improvement in this generation of Linux-libre, the fourth since we got involved, consisted of making the deblobbing scripts more efficient.
As we accumulated thousands of patterns to recognize blobs, sequences that look like blobs but that aren't, requests for non-Free firmware external to Linux, and documentation that induces users to install it, running the GNU sed script generated to locate and remove blobs became too expensive for many users: in recent releases of Linux-libre, GNU sed took some 15 seconds and more than 2GB of RAM to compile all the patterns in the script.
The solution was to rewrite the main script in higher-level scripting languages. GNU awk reduced the start-up time to about 3 seconds, and memory requirements dropped by an order of magnitude, but 3 seconds multiplied by the 260 files that get cleaned up with this script to form Linux-2.6.33-libre is a lot of time to waste. Python and PERL compile our huge collection of patterns in tenths of a second, while reducing memory use by almost another order of magnitude. However, internal limits in PERL's pattern matching algorithm produce incorrect results in deblob-check, so using it with PERL is not recommended for now.
For deblob-main's cleaning-up of small files in Linux, Python was determined to be fastest, which is why it is the new default. For verifying that a large tarball is clean, Python and PERL's run-time jump to more than 90 minutes, up from 5 minutes with GNU awk and as little as 3 minutes with GNU sed. GNU awk comes ahead when listing all the blobs in a Linux tarball, now with a long-wished feature: printing before each blob the name of the file within the tarball that contains it.
Future releases may be smarter in choosing suitable backend depending on task and inputs. For now, users of deblob-check should be aware of the new flags: –use-python, –use-awk, –use-perl, and –use-sed, and the corresponding environment variables PYTHON, AWK, PERL, and SED.
The lower memory footprint and CPU requirements for checking and cleaning up individual files means it is again possible to clean up Linux trees on the fly, which a number of users used to find valuable.
Over the next few days, we'll also roll out Linux-libre, generation 4, for earlier Linux releases, fixing a few deblobbing errors in staging drivers and catching a few more occurrences of non-Free blob names in documentation and error messages.
Request for comments
A number of our users have expressed legitimate dissatisfaction with a consequence of the method we've used to stop the kernel from inducing users to install non-Free firmware. It is not our goal to prevent users from loading or running non-Free firmware, but the only way we thought of to avoid inducing users to run non-Free firmware had the side effect of making it impossible to use the non-Free firmware just by installing it.
In Linux, several drivers call request_firmware with a blob name. This request is logged, including the blob name, and passed on to a userland program, supposed to locate a firmware file with that name and upload it to the kernel. Given the logs, in addition to existing and potential behavior of the userland program, this amounted to Linux telling its user to install a specific non-Free program, which is unacceptable.
Linux-libre releases since generation 2 replace the blob name with a name that the firmware loader is unlikely to match, and that could be recognized in userland to inform users about the lack of Free firmware for some hardware component of the system. We also reject whatever response the firmware loader produces for such requests, to minimize the risk of accidental matches and hardware damage.
We reasoned that anyone determined to use the firmware could still build a module, or a complete kernel, that issues the request and uses the response. This possibility was considered too cumbersome by some.
Recently we came up with another way to achieve the goal of stopping the kernel from inviting users into the trap of non-Free Software: where Linux requests a firmware file that we know is non-Free, we could anonymize the blob name with a unidirectional hash of its name and a kernel build and/or session identifier, and issue a request for a file named after the computed hash.
Given a suitable implementation of the userland firmware loader, whatever pieces of firmware the user chose to install would still be readily located and made available to the kernel. However, because of the unidirectional nature of the hash, a request for firmware that's not installed won't steer users toward that firmware, because the hash code won't immediately identify it. Thus, if the user insists on installing this firmware, Linux-libre will work with it, but it is very unlikely anyone will install the firmware because of Linux-libre.
Join us at linux-libre@fsfla.org and let us know your suggestions, other ways to address this issue, or your opinion about this plan and whether it might be accepted upstream. Feedback and help are welcome!
In the mean time, Be Free! with Linux-2.6.33-libre, and help us reverse the growing dependency of Linux on non-Free firmware.
About Linux-libre
Linux-libre is a project maintained by FSFLA, that releases cleaned-up versions of Linux, suitable for use in distributions that comply with the Free Software Distribution Guidelines published by the GNU project, and by users who wish to run Free versions of Linux on their GNU systems. The project offers cleaning-up scripts and Free sources, binaries for some Free GNU/Linux-libre distributions, binaries to replace with minimal changes the kernels in non-Free GNU/Linux distributions: Freed-ebian and Freed-ora, and artwork with GNU and the Linux-libre mascot: Freedo, the clean, Free and user-friendly light-blue penguin. Visit our web site and Be Free!
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/
http://www.gnu.org/distros/
About FSFLA
Free Software Foundation Latin America joined in 2005 the international FSF network, previously formed by Free Software Foundations in the United States, in Europe and in India. These sister organizations work in their corresponding geographies towards promoting the same Free Software ideals and defending the same freedoms for software users and developers, working locally but cooperating globally.
http://www.fsfla.org/
Copyright 2010 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 worldwide 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.
Argentine peace
Mon Aug 24 01:34:02 2009
Argentine peace
To SOLAR, Hipatia, Madres de Plaza de Mayo, UTUTO, and their members; to other Free Software and Human Rights organizations, projects and activists; and to whomever else it may concern,
FSFLA is accused of acts in Argentina that are incompatible with our values and public commitments. The accusations are misdirected: they were first raised more than 4 years ago, against a few people who later came to be FSFLA founding members but are no longer in FSFLA. We cannot judge the dispute between others, but if we had existed then as today, we certainly wouldn't have behaved as alleged. We shall never recommend that Free Software speakers avoid a venue where they will be welcome and listened to, and we shall never try to divide a project committed to the values of the Free Software Movement.
FSFLA was founded in November, 2005. One year later, insurmountable internal differences forced a restart. Of the people against which the accusations were first raised, none remained. We adopted a new constitution and invited Free Software activists from all over Latin America to join us.
Whatever occurred happened before FSFLA's founding, it wasn't approved by FSFLA. There wasn't even discussion about these issues within the FSFLA formation team before they allegedly took place. Per our constitution, nobody represents FSFLA without a formal decision to approve this. If our name was used, it was without authorization. We deny any connection with whatever did happen. Our current values and public commitments would not have permitted us to behave as alleged: if consulted, we'd advise and decide against the alleged acts attributed to a few of our founders.
In spite of our non-involvement, we recognize and regret the setbacks and conflicts that followed the doubts about whether Richard Stallman should speak at the Universidad Popular de Madres de Plaza de Mayo, in 2004, and the alleged attempt to divide the UTUTO project, in early 2005. Our constitution demands us to value the long-term advancement of Software Freedom ahead of anything else. This is the opposite of the alleged acts.
We stand by our commitments to our constitution, our mission, and the ethical, moral and social values that are the foundations of the Free Software Movement. We vow to help and support the promotion of the ideals and principles of Software Freedom to people and entities, regardless of their political inclinations, including social movements and human rights organizations such as Madres de Plaza de Mayo, along with any Free Software communities that welcome our cooperation to that end. We respect and support the unity of the UTUTO project, the first to create a 100% Free distribution of GNU/Linux, and of any other projects committed to the values of the Free Software Movement.
We urge the involved parties to attempt to resolve peacefully the remaining conflicts and put an end to the hostilities that harm the Free Software Movement. We reaffirm our wish and invitation for further cooperation with and among all communities, organizations, and activists in the promotion of Software Freedom.
Free Software Foundation Latin America
About FSFLA
Free Software Foundation Latin America joined in 2005 the international FSF network, previously formed by Free Software Foundations in the United States, in Europe and in India. These sister organizations work in their corresponding geographies towards promoting the same Free Software ideals and defending the same freedoms for software users and developers, working locally but cooperating globally.
Copyright 2009 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.
Caracas Declaration
Mon Jul 27 06:45:22 2009
Preamble
In Caracas, Venezuela, on the 20th day of the month of July, 2009, in conformance with the Freedom values established in the GNU Manifesto and in the Free Software definition,
Considering that scientific and technologic knowledge amounts to a need and a right of the peoples of Latin America, as prioritary policy for the cultural, economic, social and political development of their nations.
Considering that the commitment is inalienable to defend the rights of users, developers, governments and businesses to use, adapt, share and improve their software and resist the unauthorized use of personal information by third parties, so as to be able to maintain control of their informatics.
Considering that Free Software is an ethical way of technological development, with collaborative features, based on or supported by a social fabric formed by multidisciplinary teams that fight and participate for a common end: Software Freedom and the values it encompasses.
Considering that Free Software represents, for the Peoples and Governments of Latin America, an opportunity for the adoption of Free Open Standards in their administrative processes, that suit their needs for implementing information systems for Electronic Government.
Considering that the adoption of Free Software developed with Free Open Standards in Latin American governments will facilitate interoperability of the information systems of the States, contributing to faster and appropriate responses to citizens, improving governability, along with a greater participation of users in the maintenance of security levels of their software.
Considering that Free Software represents a unique opportunity for the consolidation of Technological Sovereignty and Integration of the Latin American peoples, and the elimination of technological lock in caused by Proprietary Software monopolies.
Considering that a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of great importance for full compliance with said commitment.
As Free Software Foundation Latin America, we have decided to publish the following message through this document, which proclaims “Software Freedom” as a common goal, for which all Latin American nations ought to strive, to the end of generating community work that promotes and demands ethical values, through education and respect for the rights and Freedoms to use, study, modify and distribute Free Software. This is how we have developed the following declaration titled “Caracas Declaration” that contains recommendations for each one of the action axes that we regard as priorities:
On Local Communities and Free Software
We invite Latin American communities and their members to disseminate all their activities and overall their success cases, for knowledge of all local achievements at an international level will serve to exemplify with facts the benefits of Freedom, encouraging other communities to imitate them.
Likewise, for the success of our mission it is important to set aside differences and problems that have become historical background, taking community work initiatives, so that the many similarities prevail over the few differences between local communities, to achieve more and better results.
Software Freedom activists have a responsibility to present values, defending and disseminating the essential Freedoms that define Free Software, and it is to this end that we request them to inform users about the harm caused by the Proprietary Software included in a majority of the currently popular GNU/Linux distributions, and invite them to promote wholly Free distributions, educating society for Freedom and its values over technology.
Free Software Foundation Latin America, conscious of the needs and requirements to confront the grave implications that Proprietary Software imposes, renews its commitment to support the dissemination and the community processes that promote synergy among local communities on an international level, in favor of Freedom and the values that Free Software promotes.
On Free Software and Latin American States
Governments must represent and promote the interests of their peoples, having a duty to ensure the control of the goods they administrate and regulate, a reason for which they must keep them under control through Software that brings with it freedom to run it for any purpose, to study its source code to understand its functioning and adapt it to their own needs, thereby ensuring the state's sovereignty in the technological field and the continuity and integrity of access to information.
This is why we invite governments to use and promote Free Software (including free drivers and associated technologies) so that they can comply with their duty to maintain self control, auditability and sovereignty.
All that states produce in terms of Software is citizens' property and thus a public good, that should be published, respecting the essential Freedoms of Free Software, unless the people decides not to publish it. Furthermore, these public goods must keep their function of serving citizens and must be published under terms that promote the interests of the nations and of society. We summon governments to publish software they develop and use, under licenses that not only respect, but also defend and promote the appropriate values for all its users, that is, Free Software and Copyleft licenses, that make the freedoms inseparable from the software.
Governments of Latin America: promote a culture of respect for Software Freedom, breaking the social inertia that induces governments and people to give up their freedoms, enabling them to generate a society that is freer, more equitable and just.
Free Software in Latin American Education
In the field of education, teaching Free Software will instill the ethical and moral values as a dynamic instrument of integration among individuals, their social contexts and therefore in all nations.
We issue a call for the promotion, among students, of values towards society, fomenting in them the cooperation and the will to share with their neighbor through the use of Free Software, since the use of Proprietary Software turns sharing and collaboration into a crime, and restricts the Freedom to learn by not permitting access to the knowledge about how the Software is built.
Another point is that Free Software enables a better use and redistribution of the economic resources, and these savings enable better educational platforms at education centers.
Our Commitment
Free Software Foundation Latin America, acting as an international network of organizations and people who promote Software Freedom, will serve as a facilitating agent for the communication and diffusion of local activities, also supporting initiatives by means of representation and international bridging.
About this document
This document springs out of the first meeting of Free Software Foundation Latin America members, who in Caracas, Venezuela, met at the Fifth National Congress on Free Software and decided to compose this declaration. It contains a set of impressions and positions about community, educational and political aspects, in which the primary focus given to the document is promoting Freedom values over technology and ethical values of practical ones.
About FSFLA
Free Software Foundation Latin America joined in 2005 the international FSF network, previously formed by Free Software Foundations in the United States, in Europe and in India. These sister organizations work in their corresponding geographies towards promoting the same Free Software ideals and defending the same freedoms for software users and developers, working locally but cooperating globally.
Copyright 2009 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.
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2009-07-declaracion-de-caracas
The board members of Free Software Foundation Latin America sign in a single act in the city of Caracas, Venezuela, on July 20th, 2009, with cooperation of the board observer Eduardo Saavedra.
IRPF-Livre 2009: The struggle against “Softwares Impostos” goes on
Fri Apr 17 07:37:04 2009
IRPF-Livre 2009: The struggle against “Softwares Impostos” goes on
The deadline to turn in income tax returns to Receita Federal do Brasil is approaching. RFB wants you to prepare yours using a trojan horse it created and controls. FSFLA, once again, offers a solution: IRPF-Livre 2009.
http://www.fsfla.org/~lxoliva/fsfla/irpf-livre/2009/ (in Portuguese)
RFB's failure to abide by the Brazilian Federal Constitution remains: it is incompliant with the constitutional principle of publicity, even after a demand backed by the transparency law, for denying citizens the possibility of verifying, through inspection of source code, that the programs it offers work in accordance with the tax law in force.
http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_Ato2004-2006/2005/Lei/L11111.htm (in Portuguese)
Even after legal procedures, it still imposes on taxpayers inconstitutional demands, of using a specific program to present information required by law, instead of setting a Free Open Standard for the forms, enabling multiple compatible implementations, among which RFB's own, which should in turn be Free Software.
http://www.fsfla.org/stdlib/
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2007-03-irpf2007
Once again, to protect citizens' rights to freedom, to safety and to privacy, it was necessary to resort to reverse engineering, to find out undocumented changes to file formats in the specification published by RFB, so as to update the program IRPF-Livre, that we first published in 2007.
http://www.fsfla.org/texto/denuncia-irpf (in Portuguese)
Take advantage of the upcoming holiday to set yourself free, not only from the obligation of turning in your tax return, but also in a broader sense! Prepare your declaration using exclusively Free Software: IRPF-Livre 2009, Free Java virtual machines such as GNU Interpreter for Java and IcedTea, the GNU operating system, and a Free kernel, such as Linux-libre. And then, after you're done with IRPF-Livre, keep on using the others: Be Free!
http://www.fsfla.org/~lxoliva/fsfla/irpf-livre/2009/ (in Portuguese)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Interpreter_for_Java
http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.gnu.org/distros/
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/
About IRPF-Livre
It's a software development project to prepare Natural Person's Income Tax returns in the standards defined by the Brazilian Receita Federal, but without the technical and legal insecurity imposed by it.
IRPF-Livre is Free Software, that is, software that respects users' freedom to run it for any purpose, to study its source code and adapt it to their needs, and to distribute copies, modified or not.
The program can be obtained, both in source and Java object code forms at the following location:
http://www.fsfla.org/~lxoliva/fsfla/irpf-livre/2009/ (in Portuguese)
About FSFLA's Campaign against Softwares Impostos
We understand the Brazilian law, particularly the Federal Constitution, grant preference to Free Software in the public administration, both internally, for compliance with constitutional principles, and in interactions with citizens, for respect for their fundamental constitutional rights and for compliance with the same and other constitutional principles.
This campaign, started in October, 2006, seeks to educate public administration managers about these obligations that are beneficial both to citizens and to the public administration itself, such that they pay attention not only to compliance with the law, but also to respect for citizens and for digital freedom.
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2008-04-softimp-irpf-livre-2008
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/anuncio/2008-02-softimp-irpf2008
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/circular/2007-09#1
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/circular/2007-04#3
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/anuncio/2007-03-irpf2007 (in Portuguese)
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/circular/2007-03#1
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/circular/2006-11#Editorial
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/anuncio/2006-10-softimp
About FSFLA's “Be Free!” Initiative
It's a project to renew the original goals of the Free Software Movement: not just promote Free Software itself, but rather Software Freedom, achieved by a user only when all the software s/he uses is Free Software.
http://www.fsfla.org/befree/
To make this goal achievable, besides awareness campaigns and speeches and the activities against “Softwares Impostos”, FSFLA has maintained Linux-Libre, a project to set and keep Free the non-Free kernel Linux, most used along with the Free operating system GNU.
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/
http://www.gnu.org/distros/
About Free Software Foundation Latin America
FSFLA joined in 2005 the FSF network, previously formed by Free Software Foundations in the United States, in Europe and in India. These sister organizations work in their corresponding geographies towards promoting the same Free Software ideals and defending the same freedoms for software users and developers, working locally but cooperating globally. For more information about FSFLA and to contribute to our work, visit our web site at http://www.fsfla.org/ or write to info@fsfla.org.
Press contacts
Alexandre Oliva
Board member, FSFLA
lxoliva@fsfla.org
+55 19 9714-3658 / 3243-5233
+55 61 4063-9714
Copyright 2009 FSFLA
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Permission is also granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of individual sections of this document worldwide 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.
http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2009-04-softimp-irpf-livre-2009
Last update: 2008-02-21 (Rev 2811)