This activity report has been approved by the FFII.de working group on Jan 21st 2008.
Contents
Activities
In 2007 the FFII participated in several trade fairs, demonstrations, and conferences. Reports (in german) are linked here if available.
Trade Fairs
At these trade fairs we were present with a booth:
3.3.-4.3.: Chemnitzer Linux-Tage, Chemnitz
30.5-2.6.: LinuxTag, Berlin
- 20.10.: Brandenburger Linux-Infotag, Brandenburg/Havel
27.12.-30.12.: Chaos Communication Congress, Berlin
Demonstrations
The following demonstrations were either organized by FFII or we participated in:
29.3.-30.3.: "Patente statt Innovationen!", Berlin, "Patents instead of Innovation": satirical action on the occasion of a patent conference of the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) and the German Industry Association (BDI)
25.6.: demonstration against software patents and an out-of-control patent system, München, on the occasion of the symposium "the future of patent jurisdiction in Europe" by the Federal Patent Court
22.9.: "Liberty instead of Fear", Berlin, demonstration against the data retention law et al.
7.12.: "No Software patents -- freedom of innovation instead of software monopolies", München, on the occasion of the Amazon 1-Click-Gift-Patent proceedings at EPO
Conferences and Panel Discussions
29.3.-30.3.: "Europe of innovations - fit for the future?", Berlin, conference on patent law by the BMJ and BDI
18.4.: European Patent Forum 2007, Munich
26.4.: Intellectual Property Day, Berlin, event of the BDI
21.6.: "Softwarepatente - what will happen after the failure of the directive of patentability of computer implementierted inventions?", Potsdam, public panel discussion during @kit-meeting 2007
25.6.: "The Future of European Patent Jurisdiction", Munich, Symposium of the Federal Patent Court and BMJ
27.6.: "Software patent - All over for small businesses in Web 2.0?", keynote at 5th day on information law in Düsseldorf
1.11.: "The effective protection of intellectual property -- key question for the economic future of Europe", Berlin, conference of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation
27.12.-30.12.: "<NO>OOXML - A twelve euros campaign against Microsoft's Office broken standard", Berlin, 24. Chaos Communication Congress
Open Standards
In June the grand coalition (which forms the German government) submitted a proposal for Open Standards to the Bundestag. This welcome initiative contained, however, a definition of "Open Standards" which would have explicitly allowed the so-called RAND (Reasonable and Non Discriminatory) licences. But RAND-licences are often neither fair nor nondiscriminatory. A lobbying effort of FFII lead to an improved definition, but unfortunately still not a fully satisfactory one. Details on this at https://www.ffii.de/wiki/offenestandards (in German)
Within the FFII campaign NoOOXML on July 18 the FFII.de working group submitted a recommendation to the Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN, German institute for standards) to reject the Microsoft-ECMA standard proposal together with over 200 comments.
Data Retention
The FFII.de working group supports the "Joint statement on the draft bill on telecommunications data retention" and called to participate in the demonstrations organized by the "Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung" (AK VDS, Working Group Data Retention).
We also assisted organisationally with these and many other activities of the AK VDS, in particular within the regional group Berlin, in the founding of which we were significantly involved.
Press
We significantly improved our press work this year. In total we published 11 press releases, of these were 7 translations of English press releases of the FFII, 4 of our own.
All press releases were sent via neues@ffii.org. For a PR on the definition of Open Standards in the German Bundestag we additionally used the service Pressebox.
The FFII was quoted often in well-known IT-news sites, e.g. more than 35 times on heise.de alone.
Website
In 2007 the website www.ffii.de as well as a wiki were set up. The website shall serve as portal for the FFII in the German speaking area.
Via the Wiki we collected almost daily news on the topic of FFII. There were more than 450 items in 2007. The 10 most recent newspicks are displayed on the front page of our website. It is also possible to subscribe to the news via a RSS feed.
We also maintain a calendar with dates of interest. In 2007 there were more than 90 entries, the FFII participated in 25 of these events.
Mailing lists
The working group uses the following mailing lists:
neues@ffii.org - news in German, e.g. press releases (translated from ffii.org or our own)
de-parl@ffii.org - general discussion list
de-help@ffii.org - contact address of the working group and internal coordination of active members (non-public)
We had more than 100 new subscriptions of our mailing lists in 2007.
Berlin Office
A major project of the working group is to set up and maintain an FFII office in Berlin. To this end, we started a fundraising campaign, asking the German FFII supporters for donations. Up until Jan 8, 2008 we received donations of up to 8780 Euro, which we see as a grand success.
For the office we could win an employee who attends full-time to the build-up of the project for two months (November and December). This included the fundraising campaign, presence in the office, help in general working group issues like the design and print of flyers, and the preparation of proposals for foundations, by which we intend to secure the medium-term financing of the office.
More on the Berlin Office at https://www.ffii.de/Berliner_Buero/ (in German)
Internals
The internal constitution of the FFII.de working group succeeded through the continuous collective work. On Mar 26 we agreed on a formal structure with regard to members, decision making and responsibilities.
On May 17 the FFII board set the 2007 budget of the working group to 3500 Euro, with the option to get another 1000 Euros and the expectation that we collect 1000 Euros in donations. The expenditures of the working group were 3938.64 Euro, the income amounted to 486.20 Euro. Through the above mentioned fundraising campaign for the Berlin office another 8780 Euros were raised.
A detailed list of our decisions and finances is available on request.
Since we set up the membership application web form on our web site on Nov 23, we succeeded in gaining 37 new members this way. During the 24C3 conference we won another 10 new members.
The working group helped in distribution of some hundred EUPACO flyers at a patent conference in Berlin, sending a mass mailing to the German signatories of the NoOOXML campaign and assisted with the organization of the FFII.org board meeting in Berlin on Mar 24.
Chat meetings
Since Mar 12, 2007 the working group meets regularly every Monday at 9pm in the freenode-chat in channel #ffii-de. Exceptions were only Christmas Eve (24.12.) and New Year's Eve (31.12.). In total there were 41 meetings. The chat serves for discussion and decision making. There is an agenda on which items can be put by every interested member.
