FSFE Newsletter November 2018

Written by

Erik Albers on 2018-11

Software Freedom in Europe

For 17 years, the FSFE has been empowering people to have control over their technology, and we get better at it every year. To help you understand how we work and what we do, we have just published "Software freedom in Europe", the yearly report about the FSFE and our activities.

The report gives you a breakdown of important things the FSFE has achieved during the last 12 months in one document. In the 2018 report, you will read about several campaigns, our input on the European Union's copyright reform, and about our successful outreach in demanding publicly financed software be made publicly available under a Free Software licence. You will also get insights about the multiple events we (co-)organised, about our community and groups that helped us with these achievements. Finally, we will display some numbers showing what resources we counted on, and giving an outlook for the next year.

If you like our report, please share it on your favorite (social) media channels and mailing lists, among your colleagues, friends and families.

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What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE

A large part of the FSFE team was present at the SFScon in Bolzano, Italy, with a booth. The FSFE's president Matthias Kirschner gave a talk about how "Technology shapes democracy" and our EU public policy programme manager Alexander Sander hosted a policy workshop.
Bits&Bäume is a conference to bring together actors of different sustainability and digital right movements. The FSFE local group Berlin was present with a booth and Erik Albers gave a talk about software as a digital resource, Christian Nähle about Free Software in municipalities and Bernhard Reiter about paying for freedom.
In the third consecutive year, the FSFE coordinators Spain were running a booth at OSHWDem, a fair about Free Software and free hardware. On this occasion, the creation of a FSFE local group in Northern Spain was announced, as well as a translation team for the Galician language. If you are interested to join one of them, please get in contact with Pep Diz.
At this year's Linux Day Italy, the FSFE Local Group Sicilia hosted an event with Giuseppe Bonocore, member of FSFE local group Milano, who gave an introduction about the FSFE and the state of the art of Free Software for "Microservices, dev-ops and silverbullet". At the same time, the FSFE local group Milano was also hosting an event in Milano about Free Software and open source culture, together with local associations where Stefano Costa gave a talk about "Libera il tuo router!" (Free your router).
David Boddie writes about how he learned to publish applications through F-Droid and encourages everyone to do likewise: "The process was smooth and people were friendly and happy to help".
Björn Schießle writes about his set-up of Zim, and how that helps him keep being organised.
Diderik van Wingerden proposes an alternative entrepreneurial-based innovation model that he believes has the potential to be good for people and the planet by design.

Get Active

Towards the end of the year, many people are open to join or support a cause they believe in or they believe to do good. If you liked our annual report and the work we are doing, please spread the word about it. You can for example share our report on your favorite (social) media channels and mailing lists, amongst your colleagues, friends and families. If you are not a supporter of the Free Software Foundation Europe yet, please consider doing so and strengthening the European Free Software movement. Help yourself by making the process of understanding or explaining the importance of Free Software easier for yourself with our promotion material. Get our latest merchandise and improve your outfit for the winter season - or gift it to someone you know during the winter celebrations.

Contribute to our newsletter

If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to us. As always, the address is newsletter@fsfe.org. We're looking forward to hearing from you!

Thanks to our community, all the volunteers, supporters and donors who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators, who enable you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.

Your editor,
Erik Albers

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