"Of course, it should be in the users interest to 'ride their bicycles independently', i.e. not having to rely on training wheels. However, the training wheels keep children from falling and give freedom to both the children and their parents. Likewise Wine helped to give freedom and security to the users. It is for this we are thankful and we recognise their work."

"It is a clear, legal fact that distributing Free Software means people must comply with the licences. GPL-Violations.org and the FTF are now building the long-term legal infrastructure for support and compliance" comments Harald Welte. Shane Coughlan adds "I believe our new agreement will help ensure sustainability for legal infrastructure to support Free Software in Europe."

Issues around standardisation continued to make headlines during April. However, other important areas of focus were also under discussion around the world.

It has been another busy month for software freedom. Open Standards have continued to dominate discussions in ICT with the MS-OOXML proposal being accepted by ISO as a standard. FSFE and numerous other parties have observed this process from the beginning and have reason to be concerned about the state of international standardisation. You could read more about this in our lead story below.