2018 internship positions as student interns

FSFE is a charity dedicated to empowering users to control technology. We are working to build freedom in digital society. We operate in a lively environment with volunteers from many countries. We are looking for students who can join our team in Berlin for three months or more as a mandatory part of their studies or before graduation.

What we can offer is: A challenging and exciting time with a dynamic NGO working internationally A close-up view of organisational and community processes A chance to take the initiative and put your own ideas into practice The opportunity to meet and work with Free Software advocates across Europe

What you'll do: Contribute to FSFE's ongoing projects, working with one or more of our staff and volunteers. Communicate with contacts from the FSFE community, NGO, industry, and public administrations. Coordinate volunteers and others in the work on various projects. General office tasks. Find your own strengths, and do something you care about.

Be sure to read our pages about internships in general before applying!

Basic details

Location: Berlin, Germany. Please note the FSFE has no ability to help with accommodation or travel, you will need to cover this yourself and arrange this prior to your internship.

Duration: 3 months full time at 35 hours per week, starting as agreed. If the internship is a mandatory part of your education, the internship duration can be longer.

Compensation: This internship is salaried with a basic salary of €450 per month.

Qualifications

You should have some experience or a considerable interest in Free Software. Your field of study doesn't matter, but you should be able to relate it to our work. Traditionally, a lot of interns in the FSFE have a legal or political science background, but we've also had interns working with us with a more technical or other social science background.

Formal requirements

You must be fluent in English and will be required to show that you can legally work in Germany; either by being an EU citizen, or by having a residence and work permit for the duration. The FSFE can not help you in getting either of these documents, but we will accept them if you have them.

The internship must be a formal part of your education, or, if you do the internship on a voluntary basis, you must do the internship before you graduate and in direct connection with your studies.

You must also have a German tax number which you get by registering with the residents registration office (Einwohnermeldeamt) in Germany. This should ideally be done before starting the internship, or at latest on the first days of your internship.

If the internship is a formal part of your education, you also need health insurance which is valid in Germany, for example the European Health Insurance Card.

Application deadline

There is no fixed application deadline for these positions. We accept interns regularly throughout the year, but to facilitate with our planning and to increase the chances of us being able to accommodate you for an internship, you should ideally send your application at least six months before your intended starting date.

How to apply

Send your application containing a letter of motivation, a CV by e-mail to office@fsfe.org. Please make sure to write clearly you apply for the internship position with reference SI-2018. We prefer to receive your documents in PDF format.

Contact persons

If you have any questions about the position or any administrative details in connection with it, you're welcome to contact:

Jonas Öberg about the positions themselves, and the work involved Ulrike Sliwinski for any administrative questions

Both will be reading and responding if you send your question to the contact@fsfe.org address. We look forward to reading your application!

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32 European ministers call for more Free Software in governmental infrastructure

On 6 October, 32 European Ministers in charge of eGovernment policy signed the Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment that calls for more collaboration, interoperable solutions, and sharing of good practices throughout public administrations and across borders. Amongst other things, the EU ministers recognised the need to make more use of Free Software solutions and Open Standards when (re)building governmental digital systems with EU funds.

The Tallinn Declaration, lead by the Estonian EU presidency, has been adopted on 6 October 2017. It is a ministerial declaration that marks a new political commitment at European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Area (EFTA) level on priorities to ensure user-centric digital public services for both citizens and businesses cross-border. While having no legislative power, the ministerial declaration marks a political commitment to ensure the digital transformation of public administrations through a set of commonly agreed principles and actions.

The FSFE has previously submitted its input for the aforementioned declaration during the public consultation round, asking for greater inclusion of Free Software in delivering truly inclusive, trustworthy and interoperable digital services to all citizens and businesses across the EU.

The adopted Tallinn Declaration proves to be a forward-looking document that acknowledges the importance of Free Software in order to ensure the principle of 'interoperability by default', and expresses the will of all signed EU countries to:

"make more use of open source solutions and/or open standards when (re)building ICT systems and solutions (among else, to avoid vendor lock-ins)[...]"

Additionally, the signatories call upon the European Commission to:

"consider strengthening the requirements for use of open source solutions and standards when (re)building of ICT systems and solutions takes place with EU funding, including by an appropriate open licence policy – by 2020."

The last point is especially noteworthy, as it explicitly calls for the European Commission to make use of Free Software and Open Standards in building their ICT infrastructure with EU funds, which is in line with our "Public Money, Public Code" campaign that is targeted at the demand for all publicly financed software developed for the public sector to be publicly made available under Free Software licences.

What's next?

The Tallinn Declaration sets several deadlines for its implementation in the next few years: with the annual presentation on the progress of implementation of the declaration in the respective countries across the EU and EFTA through the eGovernment Action Plan Steering Board. The signatories also called upon the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the EU to evaluate the implementation of the Tallinn Declaration in autumn 2018.

"The Declaration expresses the political will of the EU and EFTA countries to digitise their governments in the most user-friendly and efficient way. The fact that it explicitly recognises the role of Free Software and Open Standards for a trustworthy, transparent and open eGovernment on a high level, along with a demand for strengthened reuse of ICT solutions based on Free Software in the EU public sector, is a valuable step forward to establishing a "Public Money, Public Code" reality across Europe", says Polina Malaja, the FSFE's policy analyst.

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FSFE makes copyrights computer readable

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is proud to release its next version of our REUSE practices designed to make computers understand software copyrights and licenses.

The REUSE practices help software developers make simple additions to license headers which make it easier for a computer to determine what license applies to the various parts of a programs source code. By following the REUSE practices, software developers can ensure their intent to license software under a particular license is understood and more readily adhered to.

Together with the updated practices, which mostly clarify and make explicit some points, the FSFE is also releasing a set of developer tools and examples which show the REUSE practices in action. Three example repositories, together with an example walkthrough of the process used to make the cURL project REUSE compliant, are complemented with a simple tool to validate whether a program is REUSE compliant.

With our REUSE initiative, we hope to inspire software developers to think about writing copyright and license information -- the metadata of software -- in ways which make them easier to parse programmatically.

says Jonas Öberg, Executive Director of the FSFE.

The new REUSE practices and related documentation and examples can be found on: https://reuse.software.

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General Assembly 2017: new members, new roles and new directions

The members of the Free Software Foundation Europe held their General Assembly on October 15 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The annual meeting is held to discuss strategies for the upcoming year and set the course for the overall direction of the organisation. Amongst other things an overall Code of Conduct for the FSFE was adopted, Patrick Ohnewein was elected as the new Financial Officer, and six new members joined the association.

After years of dedicated work Reinhard Müller stepped down from his role as the FSFE's Financial Officer. The organisation thanked him for his long time contributions to the FSFE and is happy about his ongoing support as a valued member of the FSFE's financial team. Reinhard was replaced in the role of Financial Officer by Patrick Ohnewein who was elected for office during the 2017-2019 term. The FSFE's incumbent president Matthias Kirschner and vice president Heiki Lõhmus were both re-elected for their roles during the 2017-2019 term.

From left to right: Nikos Roussos, Mirko Böhm, Reinhard Müller, Heiki Löhmus, Polina Malaja, Max Mehl, Matthias Kirschner, Amandine "Cryptie", Björn Schiessle, Jonas Öberg, Patrick Ohnewein. Not in the photo is Albert Dengg who also participated in the assembly.

Aside from the official elections, the General Assembly also took some important decisions for the future of the FSFE. You can read the full official minutes online and a summary about the accepted proposals hereafter

On directions: To increase diversity and to make sure the FSFE is an organisation people like to get involved in, a Code of Conduct for all FSFE events, online and offline was adopted. The executive was asked to make a proposal for the 2018 budget for identifying strategies for increased diversity in the FSFE community and the FSFE membership, by having a budget for counseling on diversity and a time budget for staff to get involved in this issue. The FSFE applies as a member of European Digital Rights (EDRi). The FSFE should create an explicit financial reserve ("Rücklage") of 100.000 Euro. (Due to a generous heritage towards the FSFE, the association received an extraordinary surplus in 2016. These circumstances allow a financial reserve that is otherwise not allowed for a charitable organisation.) On structure

Several proposals were received and discussed prior to the assembly, two of which were adopted and agreed to by the members. The proposals instruct the organisation's executive to prepare necessary changes to the constitution that reform the organisational structure. Specifically, it was agreed that a constitutional change to remove the Fellowship seats should be prepared. These Fellowship seats were introduced to give the FSFE’s sustaining donors access to the General Assembly. But instead, we like to bring in more of our active volunteers into the FSFE's General Assembly. Means the Fellowship seats will be implicitly replaced with a structure and procedures to accommodate a wider base of active members and a separation between membership and the governing organs (introducing a board of directors or enlarging the executive council, or similar). The exact details of those changes should be prepared and proposed for adoption by the members at the 2018 general assembly.

On membership: Pablo Machón and Martin Gollowitzer withdrew their membership. The Chair thanked them for many years of active work for the organisation. Amandine "Cryptie", Polina Malaja, Ulrike Sliwinski, Jan-Christoph Borchardt, Max Mehl and Erik Albers have been granted membership.

Twelve out of 28 members attended the assembly in 2017. Eleven members were absent but represented by members present by delegating their votes.

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Call for sessions at the FSFE assembly during 34C3

From December 27 to 30, the 34th Chaos Communication Congress will be held in Leipzig. As in recent years, the FSFE is happy to host an assembly that includes an information booth and a meeting point for all Free Software enthusiasts and our friends to come together. We offer a stage and look for interesting self-organised sessions for our community. This is the corresponding call for participation.

For our sessions at the FSFE assembly, we are looking for inspiring talks, hands-on workshops, community/developer/strategy meetings or any other public, informative or collaborative activities. Topics can be anything that is about or related to Free Software. We welcome technical sessions but we encourage to give non-technical talks that address philosophical, economical or other aspects of/about Free Software. We also enjoy sessions about related subjects that have a clear connection to Free Software, for example privacy, data protection, sustainability and similar topics. Finally, we welcome all backgrounds – from your private project to global community projects.

Do you have something different in mind? For our friends, it is also possible to have informal meetings, announcements or other activities at our assembly. In this case, get in touch and we will see what we can do.

Crowded room while Hannes Hauswedell is giving a session about secure mobile messengers during 33C3

Formalities

If you are interested in hosting a session at the FSFE assembly, please apply no later than

** Sunday, November 19, 18:00 UTC **

by sending an email to Erik Albers (OpenPGP) with the subject “Session at 34C3” and use the following template:

Title: name of your session Description: description of your session Type: talk / discussion / meeting / workshop … Tags: put useful tags here Link: (if there is a helpful link) Expected number of participants: 20 or less / up to 40 / up to 100 About yourself: some words about you/your biography

You will be informed latest on Monday, November 27, if your session is accepted.

Good to know If your session is accepted we happily take care of its proper organisation, advertising and everything else that needs to be done. You are then welcome to simply come and give/host your session. But please note that this is neither a guarantee of a ticket, nor do we take care of your ticket! Check the CCC-announcements and get yourself a ticket in time. You do not need to be a supporter of the FSFE to host a session. On the contrary, we welcome external guests. Please share this call with your friends or your favourite mailing list. Related information: For your inspiration to this call, see our sessions during 33C3 and 32C3. With the CCC moving from Hamburg to Leipzig, self-organized sessions will not longer happen in community rooms but on several stages that are organised by adjacent and clustering assemblies. Details still need to be sorted out, but we will form a cluster with other freedom fighting NGOs and our friends from European Digital Rights. Find some more information about this in Erik Albers' blog post.

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