Re: [Bug-gnubg] www.gnubg.org unavailable

[Mueller Achim]

Am 03.06.2018 um 00:36 schrieb Philippe Michel <address@hidden>:

On Sat, Jun 02, 2018 at 11:25:23AM -0400, Timothy Y. Chow wrote:

It's been a long time since I've tried to download and install gnubg, but
I just got a new laptop, and I was surprised to find that the website
www.gnubg.org doesn't seem to work any more.

The message at www.gnubg.org says that it is temporarily offline due to
"DSGVO". This is probably the German acronym for GDPR.

Correct.

Does someone (Michael ? Achim ?) knows what the issue is ?

Yes, Oystein and I do.

A zealous and late hosting provider ? Something with the (mostly
obsolete) wiki part of the site and its users database ? Some other
difficult or onerous requirements ?

I talked with Oystein about the issue weeks ago and also asked him to discuss it with the active programmers. But unfortunately nothing happened up to the 25th of May.

The situation is as follows:

We have a new GDPR (in Germany called DSGVO) adopted by the EU nearly two years ago, by Germany around one year ago, also a new Bundesdatenschutzgesetz. This law forces everybody saving and/or processing any kind of personal data to fulfil certain conditions starting with an understandable declaration about how and why data is preserved, processed, transferred and protected. This is valid for everybody apart from real personal web pages (family and cat pictures ;-) ).

It concerns e.g. web page stats (ip-addressess), comments on articles (nick name, email address), even plugins from Wordpress or other CMS are concerned (google fonts, spam filters and so on). This law was actually adopted to protect users and customers from big companies like facebook. Unfortunately the German version of this EU law is squishy and vague at many points. Right now many bloggers, clubs, freelance, small companies, and NGOs are unsure and frightened in Germany.

The situation here for gnubg.org is

1) Lawyers tend to categorise open source projects as non personal (fortunately we never allowed commercial banners or affiliates at gnubg.org).

2) The server is hosted in Germany, I’m responsible but don’t know yet whether a declaration should be written in German or English language. I also have no idea about the details of the CMS nucleus regarding the new law.  

3) Government authorities can impose fines when someone impinges against this law (something I’m not so afraid of)

4) Here in Germany there is another pretty ugly law (Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb) which allows lawyers to write warnings combined with a fee when they notice a violation of the law. This already happened at the 25th of May in some cases and will definitely happen more often in future. Though gnubg is kind of a hobby project without any earning there are countless commercial competitors at the game market. I see some danger in this and don’t want to be the one being fined first. Google for »Abmahnanwalt« or Abmahnindustrie« and you know what I mean.

So I decided to put the page temporarily offline until you (all the programmers) decide what to do.

It’s actually much more complicated, but I’m lacking of time a little bit right now.

Ciao

Achim

 

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