Newsletter

FSFE Newsletter – February 2015

I ♥ Free Software

Come February 14 and our website will be turning pink and heart-laden to celebrate the creators of Free Software. We have taken the opportunity on every Valentine's Day since 2010 to celebrate not only our loved ones, but also the dedicated people working very hard to ensure that we have the option to use Free Software.

You can read more about how we celebrated the I ♥ Free Software Day in 2014 to get a feel for the spirit of the occasion, and you are very welcome to join our celebrations this year!

Fellowship elections

The Fellowship elections are almost here! Three candidates (Nicolas Dietrich, Max Mehl, and Felix Stegerman) are vying for the seat currently held by Repentinus. Repentinus wishes them all very well in trying to replace him, and hopes that so shall you, our dear readers. May the best candidate win!

Voting will take place from February 20 to March 6, and all orderly Fellows whose membership is active on February 19, 2015, 12am (UTC+1) are allowed to vote. So there is still plenty of time to renew your Fellowship and to become able to make a difference.

Transitions

Whoever becomes the new Fellowship Representative will be joining a Core Team very different to that joined by Repentinus almost two years ago.

First, we expect to take on Jonas Öberg as Executive Director around the same time the new Fellowship Representative will be joining the Core Team and the General Assembly. Furthermore, later in the year when the General Assembly will be holding its annual meeting, we will be electing a new President. It is expected that the GA will confirm our current Vice President Matthias Kirschner as the new President. These changes have been internally known for quite some time, but were publicly announced by our President Karsten Gerloff only on January 26.

Something completely different

• Our staffers, volunteers, and Fellows are often present at various Free Software gatherings. If you have always wondered what goes on at these conferences, then you would do well to read the report from Chaos Communication Congress, penned by our Fellowship Coordinator Erik Albers.
• From the planet aggregation:
  • Paul Boddie writes about the inadequate coverage topics like interoperability and platform choice have received in the past from consumer magazines. He notes how the advent of multiple mobile ecosystems is forcing consumer magazines to acknowledge the problem, and invites a major consumer magazine to join the push for interoperable Free Software.
  • Guido Arnold, our Education team coordinator, has posted his monthly collection of “Free Software in Education News” for December.
  • Kevin Keijzer makes the case for Free Software in education as a human rights issue.
  • Nico Rikken argues that engineering students should be taught to use Free Software.
  • Max Mehl writes about setting up your own URL shortener.
  • Felix Stegerman gives an overview of FSFE activities in Netherlands throughout 2014.

Get active: hug a developer

For February we would like all of you to join us in celebrating developers of Free Software. Come 14th, please send developers, translators, and artists e-mail, postcards, and cake, hug them (with permission, of course), or use any other polite and creative option to let them know just how much you appreciate them and the work they have put into Free Software you use every day.

Thanks to all the volunteers, Fellows and corporate donors who enable our work,
Heiki Ojasild
Fellowship Representative, FSFE