FSFLA News
Issue #10
May 2006

GPLv3

With more than 5300 participants, the seventh International Forum on Free Software (Foro Internacional de Software Livre, FISL7.0) hosted the Second International Conference on GPLv3, which took place on April 21st and 22nd in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

FSFLA coordinated the workshops, which began on the 21st when Alexandre Oliva introduced Richard Stallman to the crowd that had overflowed the main auditorium's capacity. In his presentation, RMS explained the challenges of updating the license, and the main issues that the actual draft aims to address.

Richard Fontana, from the Software Freedom Law Center spoke next, explaining juridical details of the GPLv3 draft.

Friday 21st closed with a panel on the International implications of a worldwide copyright license, featuring Thiago Tavares Nunes de Oliveira, Omar Kaminski, Federico Heinz and Palmira Granados.

The second day of discussion on GPLv3 started on Saturday 22nd at 1:00pm with a panel on DRM and software patents, with the participation of David Turner from FSF, Beatriz Busaniche, Thiago Tavares Nunes de Oliveira, Paul Madick and Pedro Rezende.

The next session took care of issues related to compatibility of GPLv3 with other licenses, which were approached by Georg Greve from FSFE, Alexandre Oliva, Tania Leal, Don Armstrong y Simon Phipps.

The second day closed with a panel on adoption of the new license by developers, which was held by Federico Heinz, Daniel Olivera, Michael Tiemann, Cesar Brod y Ciaran O'Riordan.

Booth at FISL

For the first time, FSFLA shared a booth in a major event with two of its sister organizations, FSF and FSFE. Members of the three organizations wheathered together the four days of Latin America's
largest Free Software event, which was held this year at FIERGS.

FSFLA wants to thank very specially the participation and generous help of the voluntaries who cooperated in the coordination of the booth, especially Luiz Coelho, Eder Marques and Marcelo Santana. All of them did a great job at the booth.

A new member of FSFLA's board

Professor Pedro Rezende joined FSFLA's board. Pedro is a mathematician, professor of computer science at Brasilia's University, where he also coordinates the program on cryptography and computer security. He also is an adviser to the Brazilian Institute of Computer Legislation and Politics and member of Projeto Software Livre Brasil.

Welcome, Prof. Rezende!

Teams

FSFLA invites the community to participate in its activities and teams.

The event and booth coordination mailing list is already operational at events and booths at FSFLA. People who wish to join and help us plan the materials, organize booths, and participate in the events are welcome to enter this team.

Discussion on juridical issues around Free Software are welcome in the legal team's mailing list, at Legal Team at FSFLA

The education team has also started recently. People interested in discussing issues related to the academic and education worlds are invited to subscribe at Education Team

The business models mailing list is also available at business models team This team will fulfill FSFLA's mission of helping businesses based on Free Software find better ways of doing their job.

People willing to help us maintain our web site are invited to join Web Site Team at FSFLA.

We continue to work at the translators list. We are currently concentrating in translating the main documents of the GPLv3 process to Spanish and Portuguese, as well as FSFLA's own documents. If you can help with translations to and from English, Spanish, Portuguese or French, please subscribe at
Translators Team.

For more information on how to participate of FSFLA, please visit ¿how to participate?

Events

On April 6th, FSFLA participated in a public manifestation against the "Partners in Learning" program, an agreement between the Ministry of Education of Argentina and Microsoft. A group of activists from several Argentine user groups assisted to a presentation held in a hall of the
Ministry of Education, handing out leaflets rejecting educational programs based on non-free software. "Our children deserve Free Software" read the flier, which was handed to all attendees including the Minister. FSFLA invites all activists in Latin America to carry out similar actions of opposition to these training programs, which foster the use of non-free software in our schools.

On Thursday, April 20th at 7:00pm, FSFLA held a session at FISL 7.0 introducing its work and goals. Alexandre Oliva, Beatriz Busaniche and Federico Heinz spoke for FSFLA. We want to thank very specially the participation in this session of Georg Greve, President of FSFE, and Richard Stallman, President of FSF, who joined us in the panel.

Also within FISL, Fernanda Weiden and Beatiz Busaniche participated in a session dedicated to Free Software's women, especially those from PSL Women, LinuxChix, and Gnurias. Alexandre Oliva gave a talk on "The liberating power of the second finger".

On Saturday, April 29th, Federico Heinz participated in an event in Dublin, on invitation of the Irish Free Software Organisation (IFSO). FSFLA's president spoke about two important issues: the use of Free Software in the Public Administration, and in Education.

FSFLA will also participate in GNU/Linuxtag in Wiesbaden, Germany. From May 3rd to 6th, Fernanda Weiden and Federico Heinz will share activities with our sister organization, FSFE.