Free Software Foundation Europe

Free as in Freedom

Welcome to the home page of the Free Software Foundation Europe. The FSFE was launched on 10 March 2001 and supports all European aspects of Free Software; especially the GNU Project. We are actively supporting development of Free Software and furthering GNU-based Operating Systems such as GNU/Linux. Also, we provide an assistance centre for politicians, lawyers and journalists in order to secure the legal, political and social future of Free Software.

FSFE's work is made possible by many individual contributions, in particular to the Fellowship of FSFE. One way to contribute is to join now, and to encourage others to do likewise.

Latest news Stabilisers for freedom: Wine 1.0 2008-06-18 "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." [Read more...] GPL-Violations.org and FSFE's Freedom Task Force to work more closely together 2008-05-27 "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." [Read more...] FSFE Newsletter 2008-05-21 Issues around standardisation continued to make headlines during April. However, other important areas of focus were also under discussion around the world. [Read more...] FSFE Newsletter 2008-04-16 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. [Read more...] FSFE concerned about quality of standardisation process 2008-04-02 "Technologically speaking, the state of IS29500 is depressing," says Marko Milenovic of FSFE's Serbian Team and co-chair of the Serbian technical committee on DIS29500. "In large parts it is low quality technical prose that fails to use the normative terminology mandated by ISO/IEC's guidelines. We've been told to wait for the maintenance process for MS-OOXML to become usable. That ISO would knowingly approve a dysfunctional specification is disillusioning." [Read more...] More news... [RSS]

Upcoming events Fellowship barbecue with the FFII in Berlin 2008-07-10 The local Fellowship group in Berlin will have a joined barbecue with the FFII on the 10th of July. The meeting will start at 7:30pm in FFII office, which is located at the Malmöer Straße 6 close to Bornholmer Straße. Don't forget to bring you favourite barbecue stuff. If the weather permits, we will go to the Mauerpark at around 9pm. We love to welcome you there. Fellowship meeting in Brussels 2008-07-10 A Belgian Fellowship meeting will take place on 10 July in Brussels. We meet at 19:00 in café Walvis, 209 rue Antoine Dansaert, Brussels. It's a chance to inform others about your activities in the Free Software community and there will be talk of gNewSence and GPLv3. The meeting is open to Fellows and non-Fellows interested in Free Software. We are looking forward to many attendants! 'How SELF helped building structures for freedom' speech at FKFT 2008-07-16 SELF has contributed on various levels to freedom in software and education. The work of the SELF Legal Experts Group (LEG) has helped to evolve a better understanding of Open Standards and provided a reference line for free educational materials. The coordinator of the SELF LEG, FSFE president Georg Greve, will provide an insight on how SELF has helped advance the state of the art, and how the work done in the SELF consortium will provide lasting benefit to the Free Software community. 'Licences that support freedom' speech at FKFT 2008-07-16 Shane will talk about the types of licence that provide and protect freedoms of use, study, sharing and improvement in both technology and educational text. He will review the main challenges that platforms like SELF may encounter from the legal point of view and what kind of mechanisms help support reliable legal infrastructure. He will also discuss the work of FSFE's Freedom Task Force in providing education and support services relating to legal support for Free Software in Europe. Zurich Fellowship meeting 2008-07-18 There will be a Fellowship meeting at the FSFE Zurich office from 18:00 until 19:30 on Friday the 18th of July. Some free (as in beer) beer will be provided and all Fellows nearby are invited to attend. It will be a good chance to get to know each other in person, to discuss ways of spreading the word about Free Software in Switzerland, and to generally have a good time. This meeting will be hosted by Shane Coughlan, the coordinator of FSFE's legal activities. However, he promises not to talk about licences unless someone asks. If you are coming to the meeting please let Shane know by sending an email to coughlan@fsfeurope.org. More events... [RSS]

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