= Free Software Foundation Europe Summit 2016 – Not a tech conference =

[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/2016/news-20160804-01.en.html ]

Free Software advocates from all over Europe will be meeting in Berlin from the 2nd to the 4th of September at the FSFE Summit 2016. Apart from working on furthering the adoption of Free Software in Europe, we will also be celebrating the FSFE's 15th anniversary.

One of the main missions of the Free Software community in general, and the FSFE in particular, is to put users back into the driver's seat, and have the people control technology and not the other way around.

So, even though this conference has the word "software" in its name, this is not a tech conference 1[1] as such. It is more a conference on how we are going to shape the world of tech, indeed, how we are going to try and shape the lives of computer, smartphone, and Internet users everywhere.

This may seem like a lofty goal, but during its 15 years of existence, the FSFE has been instrumental in a successful antitrust case against a big software corporation[2] that intended to dominate the market of personal computers; we have managed to keep software from being patentable in Europe[3], avoiding a veritable apocalypse for small and medium-sized tech companies; and we have worked alongside gpl- violations.org to get free licenses enforced in German courts of law[4], setting a ground-breaking precedent for the whole of the EU.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the FSFE has transformed the foundations of IT and that we have had a deep, positive impact on anybody who has sat in front of a computer, used a phone, or played on a tablet in the last decade or so.

Each year, the number of members in our community grows, as does our influence. We now reach not only developers, but also academics, aficionados, lawyers, artists, marketers, businesspeople, and journalists.

So, if you missed our prior events, we would like to invite you to attend the FSFE Summit 2016[5]. We look forward to welcoming you and remain at your disposal to help you organise your visit to our event.

As part of our pre-event awareness campaign, we are also mobilising our community in your area. If you would like to talk to the people that run the local/national teams in your country/region/city and see how they have made a difference, contact us so we can help you get in touch with them.

1. Note that if you are also interested in bleeding edge high technology development, the FSFE Summit will be held as a part of QtCon[6]. This event brings together developers from several Free Software communities who are hard at work re-shaping human-facing interfaces. As a member of the press, you will also have free access to the whole of QtCon. ↩[7]