Traditionally, the german ministry of the interior has been taking patronage for the LinuxTag. Which per-se is a good thing.

However, the current minister of the interior has been publishing some "anti-terror proposals" that pretty much all opensource people see as a serious attack on their freedom, and that actually violate the constitution (or even the human rights, such as his statements towards torture).

So this is a very odd situation: everybody would like to say "no" to him, but at the same time, welcome his ministry because of the good cooperation with opensource people the last years.

IMHO, LinuxTag needs at least make a statement that while they welcome his efforts to establish the use of open source software in public administration, they can not agree with his political efforts with respect to the "war on terror", which pose a serious attack on the freedom of individuals.

After all, there will be security experts at LinuxTag, and who if not they are capable of judging that e.g. the famous "federal trojan" won't be able to help much against organized crime (including terror organizations) because these can also organize computing safety (e.g. by not using Windows and not accepting executable data in email...). Or show up how much data abuse his proposals with respect to data gathering allow.

Registrations for the Munich Lindy Exchange (20. - 23. September 2007) are open.

That will be a Lindy exchange to remember: this is the first Oktoberfest weekend, and of course the Lindy people will rock the Oktoberfest, too (apart from doing all kinds of other fun stuff, of course).

(And yes, that means you should plan ahead - flights could become rather expensive during Oktoberfest. :-( )

So if you are a Lindy Hop dancer, and want to meet some fun people, come to visit us. You won't be just a tourist, but you'll have "Munich natives" around you to show you all the cool places.

Organized by Swing and the city (Christine von Scheidt).