FSFE celebrates its fifth birthday: "Seeing an even greater need today for strong coordinated actions to protect everyones freedom!"
The Free Software Foundation Europe celebrates its fifth birthday today. FSFE President Georg Greve looks back at the Foundation's history so far: "To me, it is exciting what we have achieved in five years since our formation - AGNULA, one of the first projects funded by the European Commission to be published as Free Software; our efforts in the Microsoft antitrust suit; the great success we had, in association with others, in preventing software patents in Europe last year; our eminent standing at UN level and last but not least our fellowship, which we initiated last year. I would have never expected these prosperities in such a short time."
FSFE's workload continues to grow at a substantial rate. "If FSFE didn't already exist, then there would be an even stronger reason today to found it, than when we did, five years ago", says Jonas Öberg, Vice-President of FSFE. Explaining his reasons, Öberg continues: "Some markets in information technology are saturated. So there is almost no market growth possible anymore. This is why proprietary businesses worldwide try to bind their customers as tightly as possible with any technical, political and legal means available. This kind of 'customer retention' is often not in the customers' interests."
The arenas FSFE is called upon to work and comment upon continues to change too. "In the past few years, we have seen technologies such as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) encroach on users' freedoms and restrict where and how they can use data or media they own or purchased. These restrictions can not be tolerated in a society where we to such a large extent build upon our past and present to create our future, and the FSFE will work very hard to prevent these technologies from becoming the norm" says Jonas Öberg.
"International businesses are lobbying heavily in favour of a legal basis for software patents and the intensification of copyright law. Politicians should consider carefully whether their economy in fact benefits from this kind of market monopolisation", Georg Greve says.
Greve continues: "FSFE's work continues unabated as we try to give freedom to computer users and developers. To further this, we aim to establish a Freedom Task Force (FTF) and a GNU Business Network (GNUbiz). FTF looks to provide a stable legal network which will help Free Software developers and businesses if threatened by unfounded legal attacks. GNUbiz aims to catalyse the Free Software business by bringing together developers, system vendors, users and other participants. Whilst in their early stages of planning, we hope to see their fruits in the not too distant future".
About the Free Software Foundation Europe
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSF Europe) is a charitable non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate in a digital society. Therefore the freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition - allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness of these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSF Europe, which was founded in 2001 as the European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the United States.
www.fsfeurope.org