Free Software Foundation Europe

From 13 – 15 June 2014 FSFE had its German speaking team meeting in the Linuxhotel in Essen. The participants had some problems to travel there because of the chaos resulting from a heavy thunderstorm in the region. A lot of train lines where not functional, and the situation on the streets was also chaotic. But just because no ICE trains stop in Essen does not mean we will not continue our work for Free Software. In the end we were able to bring all volunteers to the Linuxhotel to plan further activities and discuss current issues.

The European Commission has recently renewed its commitment to a proprietary desktop and secret file formats.The Commission is refusing to get serious about breaking free from vendor lock-in, and is ignoring all available alternatives. In doing so, the EU's civil service fails to practice what it preaches.

Today our sister organisation, the FSF, published their e-mail self defence guide and their infographic in 6 new languages. It is now available in English, German, Brazilian Portuguese, French, Russian, Turkish, and Japanese. They explain the installation of the necessary programs for e-mail encryption under GNU/Linux, MacOS, and Microsoft Windows; the key generation; the web of trust; as well as the usage of those programs. All you need is a computer with an Internet connection, an email account, and about half an hour. Please give us feedback, so we can include that before printing the infographics, and help us to spread them.

The European elections have brought 33 Free Software supporters into the new European Parliament. Candidates across the political spectrum signed the Free Software Pact, promising to support Free Software and Open Standards during their time in Parliament. Out of 162 signatories, 33 were elected

Even if you're not using Google's Gmail service yourself, many of your friends will. How well can we really protect our privacy when we opt out of centralised web services?