Contents

• General
• Associations
• Column
• Contact

General

The Free Software Foundation Europe actively promotes the use of Free Software in schools and universities. Free Software is pedagogically and technologically superior to proprietary systems. But more importantly, its basic spirit involving freedom and cooperation is the same spirit of education in a democratic environment.

We have a more detailed argumentation which sums up why we think that Free Software is the kind of software which should be used in education.

Associations

Please check out the pages on education of the GNU Project.

There are already some organisations which support and advocate the use of Free Software in education:

• The Organisation for Free Software in Education and Teaching (OFSET) promotes the development of free software for the educational system and teaching. OFSET is an associated organisation of the FSFE.
• The Open Source in Education Project (OSiE) supports and advocates the use of GNU/Linux systems in the UK.
  Please note that OSiE uses the term "Open Source" which we avoid for various reasons.
• The Freie Software und Bildung e.V. (FSuB e.V., Association for Free Software and Education) promotes the use of GNU/Linux systems in German schools.
  Please note that the FSuB e.V. accepts the use of proprietary software on top of free platforms, a position with which we strongly disagree.
• Software libero nella scuola, an Italian initiative for Free Software in schools.
• The Latvian Open Source Association (LAKA) also helps schools and promotes the use of GNU/Linux in schools.
  Please note that LAKA uses the term "Open Source" which we avoid for various reasons.
• Free Upgrade Southtyrol's Schools (FUSS) is not an association, but a project funded by the European Social Fund which has upgraded the computer systems of all the italian schools in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen, removing all the software with a proprietary license used in the school activity with the FUSS GNU/Linux Soledad distribution. The project has developed the software solution and released it under a free software license.

Column

Mario Fux writes a two-monthly column called TUX&GNU@school which the FSFE explicitly and actively supports under its roof.

Contact

If you are interested in general discussion about Free Software and education issues or would like to participate, please join our mailing list.
Furthermore, the Free Software Foundation Europe has created an education task force who aims to act as a hub for national efforts in Europe.

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