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The FSFE empowers users to control technology with its diverse activities and concrete engagement for software freedom. Follow us and make sure to receive regular updates and deeper insights on our various channels.
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We have great news! To thank you for your support, which we appreciate even more in these difficult times, we are giving away 28 English copies of the book 'Ada & Zangemann - A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream'.
We are looking for an office coordinator for an open-ended 25-35 hours per week position in our Berlin office. As part of our office management team you will be the administrative backbone of our operations. Our ideal candidate has experience as an office administrator, secretary, event organiser, or another relevant administrative role.
In the framework of the REUSE Booster initiative, the FSFE provides individual assessments and direct assistance to Free Software projects in the implementation of the REUSE best practices. GNU Health, a project that combines social medicine with technology, has recently become REUSE compliant. We have talked with Dr. Luis Falcón, its founder.
The Belgian regulator BIPT has decided to safeguard Router Freedom for all connection types, including optical fiber (FTTx). The FSFE engaged in the public consultation urging policy makers to make this right a reality, and to improve monitoring over ISP practices.
The City of Dortmund, together with Berlin and Munich, is initialising the "Open Source Big 3" and setting up a "Coordination Office for Digital Sovereignty and Open Source". The Free Software Foundation Europe, the Do-FOSS initiative, and the Offene Kommunen.NRW association will provide information about these current developments in an online event on 11 January 2023.
The 2nd Legal Education Day (LED), organized by the FSFE, took place in Bolzano to help Free Software developers understand legal topics on a basic level, so that they can avoid common pitfalls, allowing their software projects to reach full potential. The LED track featured sessions on the basics of copyright law, licenses, and other legal topics.
Copyleft ensures that Free Software remains Free. Stockfish filed a lawsuit when ChessBase distributed parts of Stockfish work under a proprietary license, violating GNU GPL obligations. Checkmate! Copyleft won. Stockfish secured numerous concessions from ChessBase to respect the GPL.
Are you thinking about registering for the second edition of Youth Hacking 4 Freedom? But you are not yet sure? Two participants from the last edition, Héctor and Leonardo, talked with us about the projects they developed and their journey throughout the Free Software world! Discover their experiences during the first edition of YH4F.
Member states, the European Parliament, and the Commission have reached a consensus on the Declaration of Digital Rights and Principles. Although it aims to serve as a reference point for the digital transformation of Europe, it instead descends into murky waters, causing ambiguity. Its wording is unclear and it overlooks existing good proposals.
Your support and contribution for the promotion of Free Software are important for securing our continuous work, ensuring our independence, strengthening our democratic society, promoting and implementing concrete steps towards software freedom, and making it easier to use and develop Free Software.
More than 100 civil society organisations across sectors have already signed our open letter about “The universal right to install any software on any device”. Now, in the European Week for Waste Reduction, we open up the letter to be signed by individuals. Join our cause and make your voice heard!
The awards for the winners from the first edition of the Youth Hacking 4 Freedom competition, Stavros, Miquel, Artur, Ekaterina, Hector, and Mark were handed over in a ceremony in Brussels. We wish them a bright future, with many contributions to software freedom.
The registration for the second edition of “Youth Hacking 4 Freedom”, the FSFE’s hacking competition for teenagers from all over Europe, has started. This contest offers young people aged between 14 and 18 the opportunity to challenge themselves, meet like-minded people and win cash prizes.
The first edition of the Youth Hacking 4 Freedom contest has ended. After 5 months of coding, over 35 young people came up with outstanding projects. Three of them will be introduced to you in this interview. Ekaterina, the mind behind Music Companion, Miquel who developed Smart Table Assistant and Alexia, the creator of a basic password manager.
The sixth edition of EU Datathon, the EU’s open data competition, came to a close last week with the awards ceremony. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) won the first prize in the challenge ‘transparency in public procurement’ with a program that helps analyse how public administrations in the European Union spend their money.
Surely you have already heard about the controversial EU draft law on mandatory chat control with the supposed aim to effectively tackle child sexual abuse. This law implies the monitoring and scanning of the communications of citizens – even the securely encrypted end-to-end one.
After a year of coding and evaluation the Youth Hacking 4 Freedom competition comes to an end, giving us amazing projects. Who won? The six winning programs offer sign language transcription, a smart table robot, a personal assistant, a music tutorial, file sharing, and a homework manager. All Free Software.
We continuously work to promote Free Software in Europe. In 2022 we addressed technological sustainability, advocated in the DMA and AI act on European level, and defended Router Freedom in Europe – among other activities. To reach younger people, we organised a coding competition for teenagers and published a children's book on software freedom.
We are looking for a working student to support our work in empowering people to control technology. The person will support the FSFE's technical infrastructure by working with our system administrators. The work is 10 hours per week in the Berlin office and home office is possible at a later stage.
A broad alliance of 13 organisations from the fields of environmental protection, digital policy, development cooperation and academia publishes a catalog of demands to show political solutions towards a more sustainable digital society. This as a prelude to the upcoming conference for digitization and sustainability "Bits & Bäume".
Since the launch of the “Public Money? Public Code!” initiative, it has grown a lot and experienced an increase of support. Now there is a new and fun way of showing your support for “Public Money? Public Code!”. With the new SharePic-Template, everybody can show their support of the campaign.
We are looking for a reliable and driven intern to support the FSFE's policy activities and contribute to our work to empower people to control technology. The person will work 35 hours per week with our team in the FSFE Berlin office for a six month period.
Librem 5 runs the fully convergent PureOS, which means you can take your desktop with you within your phone. Its dedicated graphical environment, Phosh, is becoming a popular option for Linux phones. Guido Günther, one of Purism’s main developers, reveals details of Librem’s software development in this interview.
Greece is one step closer to securing Router Freedom, but regulators are excluding fiber (FTTH) connections from the legislation. A coalition of organisations, allies of the FSFE, is now requesting that lawmakers reconsider this and thus safeguard the freedom of all users.
We are looking for a Senior Project Manager Communication for 20-25 hours per week in our Berlin office. This is a great opportunity to help amplify the importance of software freedom, so that every human can use, study, share, and improve software and thereby support other fundamental rights like freedom of speech, press, and privacy.
A network of nine cities in Germany shows the benefits of ‚Public Money? Public Code!‘
Code paid by the people should be available to the people! Volunteers will present the ‘Public Money? Public Code!’ campaign in Trento, Bologna, and Caltanissetta. If you live in Italy, now you have a perfect chance to learn more about the initiative and support it.
Students should not have to use proprietary software to participate in the educational process. The FSFE joins the Dutch ‘Coalition Fair Digital Education’ supporting privacy-respecting solutions involving Free Software in schools.
Together with the Alliance of Telecommunication Terminal Equipment Manufacturers (VTKE), the FSFE organised the online event "The Future of Router Freedom in Austria" where decision makers could debate with industry and civil society stakeholders on the future developments regarding the free choice of terminal equipment in Austria.
As a contribution to a consultation organised by the European telecom regulator, BEREC, the FSFE calls for increasing the level of digital sustainability in the telecommunications sector by safeguarding device neutrality and establishing the right to install any software on any device.
Early this year, the Commission proposed a draft for an EU Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles that aims to guide the digital transformation in the EU. Now the European Parliament has agreed on a text and Free Software makes part of it.
Today the European Parliament passed a resolution on Artificial Intelligence (AI) with a huge majority of 495 votes in favor, 34 against and 102 abstentions. There are many references to the advantages of Free Software included in the text - the FSFE now urges the Parliament to transfer its own position into the AI regulation.
The FSFE publishes an open letter, co-signed by 38 organisations and companies, to ask EU legislators for the right to install any software on any device, including full access to hardware. These rights support reusability and longevity of our devices. The alliance is composed of entities from environmental, economic, and technological sectors.
Technology experts and ecologists join forces in the Bits & Bäume ('Bits and Trees') conference in October 2022 in Berlin. This year the FSFE is part of its organising committee. We look for exciting talks and insights about how Free Software can help realising a sustainable digital society. Share your expertise and apply until 7 June.
Austria has introduced a reform law for the telecommunications sector which will affect the ability of consumers to choose and use their own routers and modems. Together with the Alliance of Telecommunication Terminal Equipment Manufacturers (VTKE) the FSFE is organising a session on "The Future of Router Freedom in Austria".
On 26 January 2022, the European Commission presented its proposal for the EU Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles which will serve as a reference point in the future and as a common EU vision of our digital rights. The declaration is now being discussed in the European Parliament and Council, and Free Software should become part of it.
In the effort of adopting digital policies aligned with people's fundamental rights, the European Parliament is in the process of finding a position on the legal framework for the development and use of AI technologies. The FSFE is following this process so Free Software is included, innovation is fostered, control enhanced, and trust strengthened.
The traffic light coalition must anchor its goals for the digitisation of Germany, based on Free Software, as set out in the coalition agreement in the 2022 federal budget. Otherwise, there is a risk of cementing dependencies on individual vendors and losing sovereignty and innovative power.
What are my options if I want to run my phone with Free Software? For our Upcycling Android campaign we interviewed Plasma Mobile developer Bhushan Shah about running a privacy-respecting and secure GNU/Linux phone ecosystem on your phone.
KDE's universal document viewer Okular is the first software to be awarded the Blue Angel ecolabel. The FSFE congratulates Okular to this milestone that confirms more environmental benefits of using and developing Free Software. Together with our Upcycling Android initiative we campaign for universal user freedoms in the EU in the upcoming months.
At the end of the week, the new German government will have been in office for 100 days. The coalition agreement contains ambitious statements on the use of Free Software (also known as Open Source), but so far nothing has been implemented. On the contrary: dependencies are to be further cemented.
Since 2010 the Free Software Foundation Europe has been organising the yearly "I Love Free Software Day". Together with hundreds of Free Software enthusiasts we celebrated our love for Free Software on the 14th of February. To all of you who took part and celebrated the "I Love Free Software Day", we would like to thank you so much.
At the Free Software Foundation Europe, we advocate for the universal right to install and de-install any operating system and software on any device. The update of the European ecodesign gives a historical chance to make this right part of European legislation. Our Upcycling Android campaign marks the beginning of our activities.
At the prominent annual conference for Free Software, FOSDEM, we exchanged opinions and chatted with people from the Free Software community. We raised awareness on wider issues that impact our movement in the Legal and Policy Devroom, co-hosted by the FSFE. Enjoy the videos from the talks and stay in touch via Matrix until the next FOSDEM.
The FSFE is eager to support its community with diverse Free Software communication channels. We are happy to announce that we have recently added Matrix to this list. After successful beta tests, every FSFE supporter and volunteer can now create their own Matrix account. We will also use our instance for the FSFE’s virtual booth during FOSDEM!
Every 14th of February, people around the world celebrate the “I Love Free Software Day”. On this day we show our love for Free Software and thank all the people contributing to software freedom. This year, we are organising a whole event dedicated to Free Software games.
As in 2021, this year's FOSDEM will take place online. But this is neither stopping us from once again co-hosting the Legal and Policy Issues Devroom nor from being present with a digital booth. We are excited and look forward to presenting you an interesting programme throughout the whole weekend.
In the final publication about 20 Years FSFE, we want to thank everyone who has worked for the organisation in an internship position. We contacted eight former interns and asked them about their time at the FSFE and their current involvement with Free Software.
A large part of our work is possible thanks to the contribution of our volunteers. This was not the exception. Our Public Money? Public Code! brochure is now translated into Spanish, and we hosted an event to share this great news with our community. GNUHealth, Pica Pica HackLab, Lliurex, Linkat, and KDE took part in our event.