Statement on Richard Stallman rejoining the FSF board

We learnt through a public announcement that Richard Stallman is again part of the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation, one of our independent sister organisations. We disapprove of this step that came without any message of remorse or willingness to change.

In 2019, Richard Stallman resigned as president and board member of the Free Software Foundation. On 21 March 2021 Stallman announced he is member of the board again. The FSFE only learnt about that fact through his public announcement.

We believe this step and how it was communicated harms the future of the Free Software movement. The goal of the software freedom movement is to empower all people to control technology and thereby create a better society for everyone. Free Software is meant to serve everyone regardless of their age, ability or disability, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, religion or sexual orientation. This requires an inclusive and diverse environment that welcomes all contributors equally. The FSFE realises that we ourselves and the Free Software movement still have to work hard to be that place where everyone feels safe and respected to participate in it in order to fulfill the movement's mission.

One crucial factor in making our community more inclusive is to recognise and reflect when other people are offended or harmed by our own actions and consider this feedback in future actions. The way Richard Stallman announced his return to the board unfortunately lacks any acknowledgement of this kind of thought process, and we are deeply disappointed that the FSF board did not address these concerns before electing him a board member again. Overall, we feel the current step sends the wrong signal to existing and future community members.

That is why, as a legally and financially independent organisation, in which Richard Stallman has not had any decision-making powers, we call for his resignation from all FSF bodies. The FSF needs to seriously reflect on this decision as well as their decision-making process to prevent similar issues from happening again. Therefore, in the current situation we see ourselves unable to collaborate both with the FSF and any other organisation in which Richard Stallman has a leading position. Instead, we will continue to work with groups and individuals who foster diversity and equality in the Free Software movement in order to achieve our joint goal of empowering all users to control technology.

Support FSFE

From Uri to Bern: Free Software will revolutionise the world

More and more administrations are following the principle "Public Money? Public Code!" and are turning to Free Software. In Switzerland, the Free Software "Caluma" has been used very successfully for several years to manage the administration of construction applications.

The canton of Uri has just 36,500 inhabitants and is probably known to most through the Gotthard Pass. But in recent years, the canton has also become increasingly well-known for its use of Free Software for administration. For years, the small canton has increasingly relied on Free Software and has been able to convince other cantons to switch to Free Software through its successful use. The Canton of Bern is one such canton.

Together with Paul Walker from the Canton of Uri, Bruno Mohr from the Canton of Bern and Christian Zosel from the vendor of the software, we talked about the tool and the importance of Free Software for a modern administration.

Video (only in german)

The four freedoms, to use the software for any purpose without any restrictions and to freely share it, the transparency to inspect the code and the possibility to adapt the software to one's own needs at any time and also to share these modifications is of enormous importance for administrations.

We have seen recently in the debate about the Corona Tracing Apps that transparency creates trust. Citizens can thus be sure that their personal data, for example, is being handled correctly. In addition, cooperation with other administrations can save costs and thus tax payers money in the medium to long term. The use of Free Software opens up completely new possibilities of cooperation for administrations. The principle of "develop once, use many times" is a departure from the constant purchase of licences for products that do not meet the needs of a modern administration but rather the business model of a vendor. This is particularly attractive for smaller administrations. The freedoms of Free Software also allow a great deal of digital sovereignty through independence from individual vendors.

This model is also worthwhile for companies: it is easier to find employees, so there are advantages on the labour market. And due to the pressure to always remain innovative in order not to be overtaken by competitors, the products also keep their finger on the pulse of time and the needs of users, which makes it possible to retain customers and find new ones.

It is therefore not surprising that the Canton of Uri was quickly able to convince other cantons to use Free Software. Bruno Mohr from the canton of Bern, for example, was quickly inspired: "Paul Walker got us really excited and that's when we knew: That's exactly what we want!" And Paul Walker's argument was as compelling as it was simple: "I'm convinced: Open Source will revolutionise the world and the sooner the cantons realise that this is the best way, the better it will be for these cantons."

The example of the cantons of Uri and Bern shows that the principle of "Public Money? Public Code!" benefits everyone: citizens, the administration but also economy. We therefore demand that software developed with public money be published under a Free Software licence. If it is public money, it should be public code as well. You can support this call by signing our campaign, distributing our brochure and convincing your local administrationto use Free Software.

Support FSFE

"I Love Free Software Day" report for 2021

This year we celebrated the 11th edition of the "I Love Free Software Day". Every year on 14 February we show our love for Free Software and say thank you to the people working for software freedom. To all of you who took part and celebrated the "I Love Free Software Day", we - the Free Software Foundation Europe - would like to thank you so much.

"I Love Free Software Day" 2021

For this year's "I Love Free Software Day" we tried something new. Together with FSFE's volunteer Florian Snow we created some share pictures for sharing our love for Free Software. Those share pics could be used to create a personalised message saying why you love Free Software. The pictures could then also be shared on social media.

Our second novelty this time was our Software Freedom Podcast Episode which provides a nice background of the origin and last 11 years of the "I Love Free Software Day". For the episode, Bonnie Mehring also invited several people from popular Free Software communities and asked them to share their thoughts about "I Love Free Software Day" and its importance.

Similar to the last years we have been heavily present on social media, and due to the current pandemic, had not planned for any offline events. But this did not prevent us from celebrating and sharing our love for Free Software. Here are the numbers and figures for "I Love Free Software Day" 2021. In the Fediverse #ilovefs was the most used hashtag!

Numbers and Statistics for "I Love Free Software Day" 2021

As in previous years, a lot of us were active in the Fediverse and on Twitter. We counted 411 tweets on Twitter and 210 toots in the Fediverse using the hashtag #ilovefs. People from all over the world joined the "I Love Free Software Day" via social media and tweeted and tooted from at least 328 different places. The most messages were published during the 14th of February, around noon (CET). Thanks to our former intern and current volunteer Jan Weymeirsch who wrote a scraper to collect and analyse the data, we have concrete numbers and visuals to support them:

Celebrating together

Some people were inspired by the new share pic design and designed their own to show the world why they think it is important to use Free Software and to say thank you. This year, both people and organisations used the opportunity to send a big thank-you to those working so hard for software freedom during the year.

Also, while social distance kept us from celebrating together offline, we were still able to join each other online. One example for this are the Developers Italia who created a lovely group picture.

Besides hundreds of individuals, also projects joined the celebration and some even created special blog entries, like The Document Foundation or Debian. Because of the overwhelming amount, we are not able to highlight all of them but just pick a few.

Comparing numbers

Compared to last years high, we noticed a slight decrease in tweets and toots and went back to the level of the participation in 2019. While in 2020, 539 tweets were posted on Twitter and 330 in the Fediverse network, it were 473 tweets and 194 toots in 2019. This did not come unexpected as this year's event was on a Sunday.

But nevertheless the important takeaway is the meaning behind those numbers and statistics. It is the sense of the community feeling it generates. All those people, organisations and companies from different Free Software communities joining the "I Love Free Software Day", celebrating together and being able to share common values. Together, we show how important using, studying, sharing and improving software for a better digital and analogue world is!

In case you missed your opportunity to thank your favourite project, mark February 14 as "I Love Free Software Day" in your calendar for next year. But remember, you can always and without any special occasion express your gratitude and appreciation throughout the entire year. You do not need a special day, as there is simply no wrong time for that!

We would like to thank everyone involved in and contributing to this day, as well as the countless developers, translators, community managers, artists and anyone else involved in Free Software.

Support FSFE

FSFE at FOSDEM 2021

FOSDEM, the biggest annual Free Software event in Europe, took place again this year on the first weekend in February. As every year, we organised a community event before FOSDEM and this year we also co-organised the Legal and Policy Devroom for the first time.

While FOSDEM normally occurs every year in the Free University of Brussels, this year it happened online for the first time - and completely with Free Software. FOSDEM had more than 25 simultaneous talks at times, with accompanying interactive text-based chat rooms, live Q&A with the speakers on video, and “hallway track” breakout rooms after each talk where speakers and attendees could join video chat together and discuss the talk. According to the main FOSDEM organisers, they had a peak of 33,600 attendees. This year, FSFE is also honoured to have co-organised the Legal and Policy Devroom at FOSDEM for the first time. And like every year, we hosted a great community event before FOSDEM, this time with a keynote from Cory Doctorow.

FSFE PRE-FOSDEM Community Event

We started this years FOSDEM with a social meeting on Friday evening. Cory Doctorow gave a keynote for our FSFE PRE-FOSDEM community event on internet monopolies and software freedom - a lecture you should not miss.

FOSDEM21: Legal and Policy Devroom agenda

FOSDEM's Legal and Policy Issues Devroom addresses important Free Software related policy or legal topics. Our community has substantial expertise in this area, yet there are few venues to discuss these matters in a forum open to all. Hackers, developers, contributors, lawyers, policy experts, and community leaders all possess expertise in these matters.

Together with our co-organisers Karen Sandler and Bradley Kuhn from Software Freedom Conservancy, and Richard Fontana from Red Hat, we discussed at the final panel the most important issues of the dev room and also tackled some topics that have been missing on the agenda. This might be a good first video for you to get an overview of our devroom.

Free Software strategy of the Commission

On 21 October 2020, the European Commission approved their new "Open Source Software Strategy 2020-2023" of the Commission. We had an interview with Evangelos Tsavalopoulos from the European Commission on this. In the interview we asked important questions about this strategy and also addressed pressuring questions by our community.

Router Freedom

FSFE’s Deputy Legal Coordinator, Lucas Lasota, presented an overview on the current state of router freedom in Europe. New rules on EU has created challenges router freedom, given that IAPs will be able to limit the right based on "objective technological necessity". The talk will go through the historical aspects and future developments in Europe, why Free Software is a fundamental enabling element, and how people can get involved.

Health public policy

In a panel moderated by Karen Sandler on Software and Hardware Freedom in health public policy, Fabio Balli, Adriana Groh and Luis Falcon discussed the extent to which the use of Free Software and open hardware can be used in the public health sector. The Corona crisis has clearly shown us that we also need to work together in the area of software and hardware. For example Hackathons were held in various countries to find software solutions to counter this crisis. The development of tracing apps or solutions for hospitals and health authorities has also shown that Free Software can help many people and that isolated solutions are counterproductive. The panel discussed what lessons we can learn from the crisis and how Free Software and Open Hardware must be used in the future.

Funding for Free Software projects

In a talk by Sven Franck the question of funding for Free Software projects was addressed. He demands to give Free Software a tax break. He presented several initiatives from the Libre Endowment Fund ("Fonds de Dotation du Libre" in French) - from financing feature development of Free Software to releasing a 4G/5G base station as open hardware or supporting litigation against the French government's decision to host Health Data on Microsoft servers.

Licencing and Compliance

We also addressed questions on licencing and compliance. Bradley M. Kuhn moderated a panel with John Sullivan, Miriam Ballhausen, Davide Ricci and Eilís Ní Fhlannagáin on the question if present compliance practices assure software freedom for device users? Compliance with Free Software licenses remains a perennial topic of discussion among policy makers in our community. However, little attention is paid to the motivations why these licenses have specific requirements. Specifically, at least for copyleft licenses, the licenses seek to bestow specific rights and freedoms to the users who receive the software integrated into the devices they use. This panel discussed the challenges and importance of assuring downstream can actually utilize the compliance artifacts they receive with products as intended by the license.

A talk by Cornelius Schumacher from KDE addressed how a large community and a company worked together in terms of licensing: "Protecting against proprietary re-licensing with a community contract - How the KDE Free Qt Foundation ensures software freedom for twenty-five years and counting". This presentation will explain the community contract, how it augments the dual-licensing model, and how it has evolved and served its purpose for 25 years and counting. It will also discuss the lessons learned and how it can serve as a model for other organisations.

And Giovanni Battista Gallus, Fabio Pietrosanti, Carlo Piana and Alberto Pianon discussed the first AGPL compliance case settled in an Italian Court. Globaleaks is an AGPLv3+ SaaS application for anonymous whistleblowing, developed by the Hermes Center. After receiving a prototype, the Italian Anticorruption authority (ANAC) re-published a version under EUPL, modifying attribution & copyright statement, removing reasonable notice from GUI, and failing to fully comply with source code obligations. After several attempts for an off-court solution, the question was finally settled by the parties, restoring the correct license, and the other issues. There are several lessons to be learned by this controversy. License compatibility and the other Free Software obligations (including conveying the corresponding source code) are not to be taken lightly, and require a good degree of knowledge and expertise, especially when they are related to an application which has been implemented by several public administrations.

Digital Markets Act

Also actual legislative proposals have been addressed. Vittorio Bertola gave a talk on Free Software, Interoperability and the Digital Markets Act proposing new European regulation to open up the dominant platforms. The European Commission recently proposed new regulations (DSA/DMA/DGA) to protect democracy and restore openness and competition. The talk will introduce them and their economic and political background; it will then focus on a specific point, the requirement for dominant platforms to interoperate with third parties, though only in limited cases, using messaging and social media as example.

Free Software Culture

Deb Nicholson and Hong Phuc Dang asked if Free Software culture is too us-centric and argued why it should not be so. Free Software is made up of a truly global community of tinkerers, collaborators, and innovators. In this conversation, Deb Nicholson and Hong Phuc Dang look at the global state of Free Software policy and talk about why no particular country -- especially the US -- should be centered.

REUSE - make licensing easy for humans and machines alike

Beside the talks at the legal and policy devroom, our Programme Manager Max Mehl gave a talk on "REUSE - Best practices for declaring copyright and licenses" at the OpenChain devroom. With three simple steps, REUSE makes adding and reading licensing and copyright information easy for both humans and machines. This presentation will guide you through the REUSE best practices and shows how to make clear licensing simple.

We hope you enjoyed this year's FOSDEM as much as we did. We are already looking forward to the next FOSDEM.

Support FSFE

20 Years FSFE: Interview with Reinhard Müller

In 2021, the Free Software Foundation Europe turns 20. This is a moment that we want to use to celebrate our community with a series of publications. In our second publication we interview Reinhard Müller who has contributed as a volunteer since 2002 in various roles from local activities to the European core team.

Reinhard Müller claims that his T-shirt folding capabilities are legendary. Without denying this fact, anyone who has worked with Reinhard on behalf of the FSFE can confirm that his dedication to Free Software and the FSFE is legendary as well. Reinhard joined the FSFE as a volunteer in its first year and met in person with the volunteers behind the FSFE's very first booth at FOSDEM in 2002. In the years following, Reinhard held many different positions inside the FSFE community. Reinhard became a founding member of the Austria country team, joined the FSFE's General Assembly as an official member and even helped to run the organisation for several years as Financial Officer and part of the FSFE's Executive Council. In all these positions Reinhard helped shape the organisation of the FSFE and still does, so much that many people are surprised when they hear that Reinhard is a volunteer and not a paid staffer of the FSFE.

Besides his official positions, Reinhard never stopped contributing. That means listing all of his contributions in one webpage basically seems impossible, but we try to mention a few: Reinhard engaged as a local volunteer in the Vienna group and the FSFE's country team Austria, organised and ran countless number of booths in Austria, in Germany and his favorite one every year at FOSDEM. Apart from these local engagements, Reinhard is always eager to shape the FSFE's European engagement by participating in the European core team discussions and decisions. And although Reinhard already had a lot of responsibility with the FSFE's yearly bookkeeping and communication with donors as our financial officer, he additionally spent his free time with countless contributions to the website, including his constant optimisations of our self-written static website generator and the automatisation of information material orders. Not forgetting to mention that in all his contributions and positions, he always aimed at making himself replaceable at the same time by maintaining comprehensive and understandable documentation of his work and hand-overs.

Finally, anyone who has met Reinhard before will agree that his most obvious and visible contributions are his highly social skills. Be it as the good spirit behind the booth, during intense and funny conversations after the booth is closed or deep at night when Reinhard performs one of his self-written songs about the FSFE: Thank you very much for being with the FSFE in the last 20 years and we hope you stay with us in the next 20 years!

Interview with Reinhard Müller

You were looking for opportunities to get involved in the Free Software movement when you saw the announcement that the Free Software Foundation Europe was going to be founded. What made you curious about the FSFE and do you remember the first contact you had with the FSFE? How did it evolve from there?

Reinhard Müller: The thing about the FSFE which attracted me most was that there was something being started in Europe. Back 20 years ago, the whole Free Software community looked very US-centric to me, and I thought that an European organisation would make it easier for me to get involved.

At some point I started to write occasional emails to the public discussion list and contributing my view about topics like whether it should be possible to make money from Free Software, or whether the FSFE should take money from companies. Funny how some discussions seem to come up again and again even after 20 years...

My first in-person contact to the FSFE was at FOSDEM 2002, where I met Volker Dormeyer at the FSFE booth and had a nice conversation with him. I'd never have thought that this would be the start of such a long tradition - I've been with the FSFE at each FOSDEM ever since, except for the virtual one this year.

Very soon I also started to join the discussions and physical meetings of the FSFE's Austrian associate organisation, from which the Austrian country team of the FSFE evolved later.

FSFE: Although you never got paid from the FSFE, from 2007 to 2017 you have been taking over the responsibility of the financial officer at the FSFE, and you still keep contributing heavily in our financial team. What are the financial challenges for a volunteer driven European NGO?

I think the biggest challenge is the contradiction between the desire on the one hand to plan ahead for the association's activities, and thus also its expenditure, and the impossibility on the other hand to predict the future development of incoming donations.

At the FSFE, we are fortunate to be able to alleviate this problem in two ways: firstly, our numerous supporters ensure that we receive regular and predictable payments with their monthly or annual contributions, and secondly, we have been able to build up financial reserves over the past years that allow us to compensate for fluctuations. Both factors allow us to act freely and without regard to any interests of our corporate donors.

FSFE: What is the most important thing so far that you learnt from your work at the FSFE?

Don't think in weeks or months, but in years, if not decades. Enjoy your successes, but don't overestimate their long-term impact. Don't overestimate the impact of setbacks, either. And always plan your activities in a way that they can survive the point at which you personally lose interest in them.

FSFE: And what is your personal favorite activity, campaign or message that the FSFE has done or is still doing?

Ever since it started, the "I love Free Software" campaign has been my favorite. It sends a thoroughly positive message, it helps to remind people of the benefits of free software, and it offers everyone a low-threshold and easy way to participate.

FSFE: Many people know you from your happy face behind FSFE booths all around Europe, especially at FOSDEM. What is so fun about it that you travel hundreds of kilometers to spend a weekend at an FSFE booth?

It's the people I meet there. With a trip to such an event, I get the possibility to meet and talk in person with exactly those people I work with over the internet during the rest of the year, and I also meet people less tightly associated with the FSFE who just come to the booth, buy a T-shirt and tell us that we're doing great work. Both are an essential source of energy and motivation for me for the work I do in the FSFE.

FSFE: From all the moments behind the FSFE booth, can you tell us one of the stories that still warm up your heart or that always makes you laugh or smile when you remember it?

Once at FOSDEM, when I still was rather new in the FSFE, Alan Cox, a well-known leading Linux kernel developer, happened to stand near our booth, and when somebody asked him about the latest news regarding software patents, he pointed to our booth and said: “ask them, they know that stuff better than me”. At that moment, I felt incredibly proud being a part of the FSFE, and I think it somehow helped me shape my vision of this organisation: let all the excellent Free Software developers in this world do their work and save their backs from the political or legal issues they don't want to mess around with.

However, the most beautiful memories are more related to the hours around the actual events: spending the LinuxTag social event sitting in the lawn, playing the guitar and singing, taking the metro after FOSDEM with 10 FSFE volunteers and 30 "I love Free Software" balloons, playing the piano in the Cafe Kafka in Brussels, or just spending insanely long evenings in restaurants, bars, and hotel lobbies with extensive discussions about how to change the world to the better.

FSFE: As a last question, what do you wish the FSFE for the next 20 years?

May the FSFE always keep a healthy balance between professionalism and openness to volunteer contributions, never lose its roots in the Free Software community, keep a dedicated and highly effective team of paid staff, and at the same time continue to affirm to volunteers that their work is important and valued. Success in the FSFE's activities will result from that naturally.

FSFE: Thank you very much!

About "20 Years FSFE"

In 2021 the Free Software Foundation Europe turns 20. This means two decades of empowering users to control technology.

Turning 20 is a time when we like to take a breath and to look back on the road we have come, to reflect the milestones we have passed, the successes we have achieved, the stories we have written and the moments that brought us together and that we will always joyfully remember. In 2021 we want to give momentum to the FSFE and even more to our pan-European community, the community that has formed and always will form the shoulders that our movement relies on.

20 Years FSFE is meant to be a celebration of everyone who has accompanied us in the past or still does. Thank you for contributing your piece of the puzzle that shapes the FSFE and setting the foundation for the next decades' work of the movement for software freedom.

Support FSFE