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 FSFE Newsletter 2008-08-23 FSFE's activities have been varied over the last month. It's promising to see the increase of Fellowship activities across Europe. We are looking forward to seeing more local groups appear and to hearing about their activities on all levels. One of the most important parts of supporting Free Software is sharing knowledge in your own community. [Read more...] FSFE welcomes KDE's adoption of the Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) 2008-08-22 "We see the adoption of the FLA by KDE as a positive and important milestone in the maturity of the Free Software community," says Georg Greve, president of Free Software Foundation Europe. "The FLA was designed to help projects increase the legal maintainability of their software to ensure long-term protection and reliability. KDE is among the most important Free Software initiatives and it is playing a central role in bringing freedom to the desktop. This decision of the KDE project underlines its dedication to think about how to make that freedom last." [Read more...] FSFE Newsletter 2008-07-08 Housekeeping items are the least popular of all tasks in any organisation, and any organisation that is working under pressure has a tendency of accumulating them. That is why after the intensive work of the past year to build up and grow the Freedom Task Force, work on antitrust and OOXML issues, and various other activities, FSFE had some of them as well. Fortunately, after substantial preparation and three intensive days, FSFE's General Assembly in June managed to take care of them and send everyone home highly motivated and with a full task list. The results of this will become slowly visible throughout the coming year. [Read more...] 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...] More news... [RSS]

Upcoming events Fellowship meeting in Duesseldorf 2008-08-30 At 18:30 on 30 August 2008, Duesseldorf Fellowship will meet in Gasttaette "Suedstern", Bilker Allee 66, 40219 Duesseldorf (5 min vom S-Bahnhof Bilk). Shane M. Coughlan, the coordinator of the FTF, will give a talk entitled "Professionalisation of Free Software projects" and there will be plenty of time for other discussions. Fellowship's stand at the Braderie de Lille, Lille (France) 2008-09-06 2008-09-07 The so-called "Braderie de Lille" (Lille's flea market) is a big outside-event which has taken place every year since the 12th century during the first week-end of september. chtinux, a Linux User Group which is installed around there, has proposed to the Fellowship to take part in the Braderie. The FSFE, and especially the Fellowship's stand, will get much visibility, since millions of people of numerous nations take a walk on Lille's streets. Come to discover this beautiful city and to eat some Braderie's culinary specialities like clams ! And above all, come in order to support the Fellowship ! Fellowship's stand will be situated on Place du Vieux Marché aux chevaux. If you want more information about this event please send an email to Benjamin: morant@fsfeurope.org Explaining Free Software on the 'NESSI Open Source Working Group' panel 2008-09-07 Shane Coughlan, FTF coordinator, will explain Free Software and the reasons behind Free Software licences at the OSS 2008 conference in Milan. He will sit on the 'NESSI Open Source Working Group' panel to discuss the European NESSI project. European Legal Network special interest group meeting in London 2008-09-08 The European Legal Network facilitated by FSFE's Freedom Task Force will hold a special interest group meeting in London to discuss business processes and supply chain management. This meeting will be hosted at the Canonical offices and is invitation only. Zurich Fellowship meeting 2008-09-12 There will be a Fellowship meeting at the FSFE Zurich office from 19:00 until 20:30 on Friday the 12th of September. 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 Benjamin Morant, FSFE's intern at the Zurich Office. If you are coming to the meeting please let Benjamin know by sending an email to morant@fsfeurope.org. More events... [RSS]

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