Jonas Öberg joins FSFE as Executive Director
FSFE has recruited long-time Free Software activist Jonas Öberg to be the organisation's Executive Director. He joins the organisation's leadership team on March 1.
Jonas Öberg is one of FSFE's founding members, and was the organisation's vice president from 2001 through 2008. He has considerable experience in managing Free Software-related projects and organisations. Before joining as the organisation's Executive Director, he has been a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow working on the Elog.io project to create a global provenance repository for creative works. In 2011-2012, he worked as Creative Commons' regional coordinator in Europe, lectured in Software Engineering and built up the conference FSCONS in its original form.
Jonas first started volunteering for Free Software in 1998, while studying mathematics at a university level. Finding the classes in computer science much more interesting than mathematics, he soon found Free Software and began volunteering for the Free Software Foundation as chief webmaster for the GNU Project. Through the years, he's also participated in Debian, the GNOME project, and authored the occasional software himself.
"We're absolutely delighted to have Jonas on board," says Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's president. "FSFE's volunteers and staff are enourmously dedicated and motivated. Jonas will channel this energy into an even greater capacity for action. Thanks to him, we will be able to achieve so much more for Free Software."
"We face a need to secure the legal, social and technical foundations of Free Software, as well as continuing the work of raising awareness of Free Software," says Jonas Öberg. "Those are challenges that I very much look forward to tackling together with our staff, fellows and volunteers across Europe and elsewhere, as well as in collaboration with other organisations."