Robots, Football, and Education — Public institutions - hares or snails? — Something completely different — Get active: Help with Euro 2012 championship

This edition covers the current developments in Open Standards policy, some basic information about software patents, an update from FSCONS about distributed computing, and how you can support us in the end of the year.

FSFE has obtained a copy of a letter sent to the Commission by the BSA last week. In the following paragraphs they analyse the BSA's arguments and explain why their claims are false, and why Open Standards are key to interoperability and competition in the European software market.

The Free Software Foundation Europe is calling on European Free Software businesses to participate in a survey of business attitudes towards the acceptability of including patents in industry standards.

This survey is a key component of a study that will play the major role in the EC's reform of standardisation policy. It is open until September 17.

One of the many arguments against allowing patents for software (alongside the principle argument that software is made up of algorithms, which are essentially mathematics, which is pure knowledge and hence is not patentable) is the fact that software is anyway covered by copyright law.

The 3rd meeting our Fellowship group was on the 4th of March and was mainly about organizing the DFD. The next -- 4th meeting of FSFE Fellowship group Slovenia took place on the 6th of July and although there was only five of us present, it was pretty important.

The European Commission this morning launched a consultation on key questions regarding the contentious issues of net neutrality and the open Internet. Until 30 September 2010, all interested parties – meaning service and content providers, consumers, businesses and researchers – are invited to respond to the consultation.

I just came back from an international meeting in Madrid on the reuse of Public Sector Information through open digital standards and open licenses. This is a partial report of the most interesting concepts discussed during the day.