22 events, one message: Maintainers Matter and we love Free Software

The 2026 edition of “I Love Free Software Day” demonstrated, once again, the strength and gratitude of our Free Software community. 22 celebrations in 12 European countries highlighted the invaluable work of Free Software maintainers as well as bringing people together to thank everyone who contributes to Free Software. Appreciation also extended across the Fediverse, alongside other surprises.

We are really proud of our community and what the Free Software ecosystem is achieving day after day, but there is one special moment each year when we invite everyone to shout it out into the world. “I Love Free Software Day” is our yearly celebration dedicated to saying thank you to all those behind our favourite Free Software projects.

Every year on 14 February, or in the days around it, our communities come together across Europe and online to express their appreciation. Whether through local meet-ups, talks, workshops, postcards, blog posts, social media messages, or simple words of gratitude, the message is clear: Free Software exists and thrives because of the people who build, maintain, document, translate, test, and support it.

For the 2026 celebration, and under the motto “Maintaners Matter”, our communities organised 22 events across 12 different European countries, reaching more than 300 people offline. From cosy café meet-ups to university gatherings and hacker spaces, people came together to say a heartfelt “Thank you” to Free Software maintainers, contributors, and developers.

And many more people celebrated it online. Hundreds of individuals and organisations joined the celebration on the Fediverse, sharing appreciation posts and gratitude messages. The hashtag #ilovefs ranked among the most used hashtags on the day. For the first time, the celebration also reached the front page of Hacker News, thanks to a “thank you” blog post by Matthias Kirschner, the president of the FSFE, who shared his appreciation for Arch Linux and the extensive ArchWiki.

New countries, Badges, Fediwall, a comic, and a map

For the first time, “I Love Free Software Day” reached Croatia and Norway, each hosting a local event and expanding the celebration further north and south across Europe. New cities joined as well, including Bonn (Germany) and Amsterdam (Netherlands). And also Tirana (Albania) returned for this edition.

The Polish community, which reactivated its activities around last year’s “I Love Free Software Day”, strengthened continued its strong engagement with events in Łódź, Warsaw, and Poznań. Poznań hosted one of the largest gatherings in 2026, bringing together nearly 80 participants for a vibrant day of talks, discussions, and shared appreciation.

Across Europe, communities also met in Oxford and the Potteries (UK), Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Eindhoven (Netherlands), Zurich (Switzerland), Barcelona and Madrid (Spain), Frankfurt, Berlin, Bonn and Nuremberg (Germany), as well as in Portugal, where ANSOL organised an online celebration, and many more.

This year also saw remarkable volunteer-driven innovations:

• A new Fediwall system was developed to highlight and visualise online participation across the Fediverse.
• A Polish volunteer set up a BadgeFed instance, creating dedicated “I Love Free Software Day” badges for organisers, participants, and contributors. A creative new way to publicly recognise engagement!
• A long-standing wish for a dedicated event map became reality thanks to Tom, the project leader of mapforge, who made a customised “I Love Free Software Day” map possible, showcasing celebrations across Europe.

To convey the importance of the day in a more visual and accessible way, the 2026 celebrations also introduced a brand-new comic, explaining why appreciation and recognition for Free Software contributors matter so much.

For the 2026 edition, the Software Freedom Podcast released its 47th episode, “ILoveFS: Let’s meet our maintainers”. In this episode, Bonnie Mehring speaks with maintainer Lorenz Kästle about the rewards and challenges of maintaining Free Software projects in one’s free time.

“I Love Free Software Day” has grown into a well-established online and offline celebration of Software Freedom. Above all, the day remains what it has always been: a joyful celebration full of gratitude, connection, and recognition.

To everyone who organised an event, sent a postcard, shared a hashtag, joined a podcast, created a badge, developed tools, or simply said “Thank you”: thank you for making “I Love Free Software Day 2026: Maintainers Matter” such a special and inspiring celebration.

Wanna know more? Read our Report about the 2026 I love Free Software day celebrations

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Ada’s Norwegian adventure begins!

When Petter discovered “Ada & Zangemann”, he immediately felt the urge to make sure the story was available to the Norwegian speakers. Now “Ada og Zangemann - En fortelling om programvare, rullebrett og bringebæris” has been published and was presented during the Norwegian local celebrations of the “I Love Free Software Day”. Read Petter’s story!

In November 2023, I first encountered the children’s book Ada & Zangemann, written by Matthias Kirschner and illustrated by Sandra Brandstätter. It quickly became clear to me that this was a story I wanted to see available in my native language. That thought led me to get in touch with the author and dive into the book git repository to figure out what would be required to produce a Norwegian Bokmål edition.

Before I started translating the book, I wanted to change the build process for HTML and PDF editions, in order to simplify the translation process and make it possible to keep track of how the translation corresponds with the original and other languages. I submitted a patch that implemented gettext PO files to maintain translations, creating PO files for existing translations, which was well received. Together with Nico Rikken from the Netherlands we have changed the book building process. It now uses DocBook XML, which is automatically converted to Scribus XML and to HTML for typesetting and website publishing. This is either done directly or combined with translations in PO format into a translated edition. With this in place, the translator work could finally begin on the translation platform Weblate.

For the actual translating work, I received valuable help from two other volunteers, Hagen Echzell and Henrik G. Sundt. They both assisted with the translation from English and coordinated the Norwegian translation with the German original. Without their help, the book would not have been finished yet.

The translation and the book were actually ready in December, but due to some technical changes required in the final stages to ensure the manuscript met Lulu's distribution requirements, it was not available to a wider audience until after New Year. The result is that I am very happy to announce that the Norwegian Bokmål translation is ready and available for ordering in print via lulu.com alongside my other published books.

During my conversations with the author, he told me that encouraging readers to buy an extra copy of his book and donate it to their local library had proven to be a very effective approach. It’s an idea that I wholeheartedly support. If you think this book deserves a wider audience, consider ordering an additional copy and donating it to a library that doesn’t yet have it in its collection.

If you choose to do so, I’d appreciate it if you could email me letting me know which library you plan to donate the book to. This will help me to keep track of which libraries have already received a copy and make it easier to identify those that still might benefit from one.

The book was officially launched during the Norway celebrations of the I Love Free Software Day organised by the Norwegian Unix User Group (NUUG).

Moreover, NUUG is purchasing around 100 books for organising different events and giving it away at local spots, mainly libraries.

The book's terms of use are Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International, which allows everyone to share and modify both raw files and the finished result, as long as all who receive the content can do the same. Any surplus from book sales goes to the FSFE.

My next step will be to see if we can produce more language editions of the book, starting with a Nynorsk edition of Norwegian. The first draft of the Nynorsk translation is ready, but it probably needs quite a lot of proofreading before it is ready for publication. If you are interested in contributing to additional language editions, please have a look at the Weblate project and get in touch with me via email.

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Addressing your questions about the Cyber Resilience Act

The Cyber Resilience Act has been in force for over a year. However, there are still uncertainties and recurring questions. During FOSDEM 2026, the FSFE held a Q&A session on this topic together with a representative of the German market surveillance authority and the European Commission.

One question, that we also explored in a survey, is the role of the steward. People are still unsure whether and under what circumstances they should or want to become a steward. One part of the question is relatively easy to answer: no one has to become a steward. The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is a product regulation that aims to place obligations on manufacturers. As long as you are not a manufacturer and your software is not incorporated into a product, the CRA does not apply to you. It becomes more complex if you develop Free Software that is used in products. In this case, the manufacturer must ensure that they can fulfil the obligations under the CRA. If the manufacturer decides to use your project, you may consider whether you would like to become a steward. If you do not want to become a steward, the manufacturer should look for alternatives or, for example, fork your project so that they can fulfil the obligations under the CRA. However, they cannot force you to become a steward.

This gives you the opportunity to work with the manufacturer and be compensated for working on your Free Software.

Besides the option of becoming a steward, there is also the option of attestation (Art. 25 CRA). In order to facilitate the due diligence obligation, voluntary security attestation programmes could be established. This could also be an interesting option for you to help ensure the maintenance of your software is sustained in the long run. There is still uncertainty about attestation, which is to be clarified by a delegated act of the European Commission. For this purpose, we have launched another survey, and you are welcome to participate by 28 February 2026, midnight AoE. to contribute your ideas and suggestions.

We will evaluate the results and make them available to decision-makers and relevant stakeholders, incorporating them into the process. Here, too, we will focus our efforts on ensuring that Free Software contributors and small projects are protected and supported.

Resources:

• CRA survey
• CRA – Role of Free Software and Q&A @ FOSDEM
• CRA in practice dev room @ FOSDEM
• Could Compliance Costs Sustain FOSS? A Theory of Voluntary Attestations @FOSDEM
• Implementing the Cyber Resilience Act - engaging with open source @FOSDEM

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Digital Networks Act: the FSFE calls for strong and consistent protection of Router Freedom

For more than a decade, the Free Software Foundation Europe has worked to protect Router Freedom in Europe. The European Union is about to reform the telecom sector with the proposed Digital Networks Act. We call for a clear and harmonised approach that upholds this freedom across all Member States

Router Freedom is the right of users to choose and operate their own routers / modems and other equipment used for internet connection. It is important for user autonomy, competition, and privacy as it would enable users to run Free Software operating systems on their routers and modems of choice. Router Freedom is understood in a broader context as a crucial element of Device Neutrality, and it requires that network operators must allow end-users to run Free Software on their devices.

For over ten years, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has been successfully advocating for this freedom across Europe with successes in Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, and Belgium.

The proposed Digital Networks Act (DNA) aims to reform the telecommunications sector in the European Union (EU). In the previous iteration (2018-2020) of regulation of routers, the EU introduced several technical rules that fragmented the implementation of Router Freedom by allowing national regulators to exclude this right from determined network topologies when “objective necessities” were in place. Unfortunately, many member states used this opportunity to exclude Router Freedom from fibre networks. Now, the DNA presents an opportunity to close this fragmentation gap by securing Router Freedom in a consistent and effective manner across the European Union.

Fragmented regulatory framework

Router Freedom is formally recognised in EU law; however, the practical implementation depends largely on how the Network Termination Point (NTP) is defined. The NTP marks the boundary between the provider’s network and the user’s terminal equipment. If this point is defined, for example, behind a provider-supplied router, users are effectively prevented from using their own devices, even if Router Freedom is nominally guaranteed. For Router Freedom, ensuring that the NTP is clearly defined at the appropriate access point is therefore essential.

Only the designation of the NTP at the passive physical point where the public network connects to the end-user's premises guarantees Router Freedom for all European users.

Although BEREC, the European telecom regulatory body, issued guidelines setting Router Freedom as the default for all network topologies, it allowed national authorities to set exclusions. Recent examples illustrate this fragmentation. In Austria, regulatory decisions have weakened Router Freedom by allowing interpretations of the NTP that restrict users’ ability to replace provider-supplied routers. In Italy, the regulatory framework has shifted back and forth over time, creating uncertainty and instability for users, manufacturers, and internet service providers (ISPs). These divergent approaches show that non-binding guidance alone has not been sufficient to ensure consistent protection of Router Freedom across the EU.

You should control your router, not the ISP

This fragmentation of rules across member states has led to limited oversight on how ISPs treat customers who use their own equipment for internet connection. In the most comprehensive study the FSFE has conducted to date, the following issues were identified:

• Limitations to freedom of choice. Some ISPs restrict end-users from connecting their routers and modems to the public network. This is observed more intensively in countries where the position of the NTP is not regulated in a configuration favourable to end-users.
• ISP’s lock-in. Some ISPs impose other restrictions that increase switching costs by end-users, like charging for provided equipment and imposition of fines when end-users use their own equipment. Lock-in is significantly more notable on fibre networks and in countries where Router Freedom is not established by legislation.
• Provision of proprietary devices. The routers, modems and optical fibre devices provided by ISPs are generally proprietary. End-users cannot inspect their firmware or install an alternative operating system. This is especially problematic with fibre connections, since many contracts prohibit end-users to change the optical equipment imposed by ISPs.

• Security issues. The lack of Router Freedom generates negative consequences for network security. Some ISPs do not provide security updates for their devices. When end-users cannot manage their own routers, they become more exposed to security flaws.

• Unlawful commercial and technical practices. Even where Router Freedom has been established by legislation, ISPs can still hamper end-users’ ability to choose and use their own routers and modems. Some ISPs make it cumbersome to replace the ISP's equipment, take a long time to provide login data or other access credentials, fail to offer technical support for the network, or threaten end-users who use personal routers with contract termination or fines.

This situation undermines not only user rights, but also the internal market of the EU. If you pay the electricity to power your router, it should be as much under your control as your own coffee machine or laptop, not something dictated by your internet provider. Different national rules on where the network ends and the user’s equipment begins create barriers for device manufacturers, complicate cross-border offerings, and erode trust in EU-level protections.

What FSFE calls for in the DNA: Router Freedom should be secured at the EU level!

The position of the FSFE is that the Digital Networks Act (DNA) must move beyond fragmented national rules and establish a clear, operational framework ensuring effective and uniform protection of Router Freedom. This requires setting a harmonised default across the EU that properly reflects the interests of end-users and consumers. Any deviation due to network topology should remain the exception, not the rule, and must be transparently justified.

Several regulators have already supported this approach. Germany’s national authority has rejected many of the arguments raised by internet service providers against Router Freedom, confirming users’ right to choose their own terminal equipment in fibre networks as well. Similarly, in 2023, Belgium formally introduced Router Freedom covering all network types, including fibre. Finland implemented Router Freedom as early as 2014 and reaffirmed its commitment in 2021. In the same year, the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets published rules confirming Router Freedom for consumers in the Netherlands.

In order to protect Router Freedom and make sure that a harmonised approach across the EU is implemented, amendments in Recital 14, Article 69, and Article 125 of the proposed text are necessary. The changes are needed to consolidate the identification of the NTP at the passive physical point of the network, by default.

"With the upcoming legislative discussions on the Digital Networks Act, we call on EU policymakers to establish Router Freedom as a clear and enforceable principle across the Union, guaranteeing all European consumers the right to use their own terminal equipment, no matter the network topology, and putting a definitive end to regulatory fragmentation", states Lucas Lasota, FSFE's Legal Programme Manager

Today, we have submitted our position on Router Freedom to the European Commission’s consultation on the Digital Networks Act. You can read it here.

Support FSFE’s work on Router Freedom

The engagement of the FSFE in European and national policy processes requires sustained effort, including participation in meetings, consultations, and in-person discussions with policymakers and regulators across Europe. If you value Router Freedom and want to support our work, please make a donation. Your contributions help cover essential costs such as travel and coordination, enabling the FSFE to continue advocating effectively for users’ rights in the Digital Networks Act and beyond.

Become an FSFE supporter now!

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SFP#47: ILoveFS: Let’s meet our maintainers

Happy I Love Free Software Day! And with this we have a special Software Freedom Podcast episode to mark this special day with something nice. For our I Love Free Software Day podcast episode we have spoken with Lorenz Kästle from the monitoring plugins.

Lorenz is part of the maintainers team that keep this core infrastructure, which is not a frontend software project, up and running. In this episode Bonnie and Lorenz discuss what nice benefits but also challenges come along with being a maintainer in your free time.

Let us celebrate all contributors and maintainers of Free Software on the 14th of February and throughout the year! For the I Love Free Software Day 2026, we say a big thank you to all the amazing software maintainers out there.

The FSFE's work aims at safeguarding Software Freedom. You can support our work by donating today!

Show notes

• Support our work for Free Software
• Monitoring Plugins
• Mastodon: Monitoring Plugins
• IRC channel Monitoring Plugins on libera.chat
• I Love Free Software Day
• Celebrations and events in Europe
• Map of events happening around the “I Love Free Software Day 2026”
• I Love Free Software Day quiz
• I Love Free Software Day Quiz 2026
• Stay up-to-date and join our Newsletter

We are happy to receive your feedback on the Software Freedom Podcast and especially on the transcript of the episode. Please, email us to: podcast@fsfe.org. If you liked this episode and want to support our continuous work for software freedom, please help us with a donation.

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