[ for immediate release ]
FSF Europe releases Fiduciary Licence Agreement V1.0
February 4th, 2002 Essen/Hamburg
The Free Software Foundation Europe is proud to announce the first publicly available version of its Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA); an agreement that will help securing the legal stability of Free Software by allowing the FSF Europe to act as the fiduciary for Free Software authors and projects.
By this, the Fiduciary Licence Agreement will help retaining the legal maintainability of Free Software, making sure that Free Software remains legally safe to use in all areas commercial or non-commercial.
While reducing the legal risks for authors of Free Software, it will enable the FSF Europe to defend Free Software on behalf of the author against abuse - even in court, if necessary.
And it will provide a solid neutral ground for projects with parties involved that differ in their aims and policies, be they commercial or non-commercial.
"We see an increasing amount of commercial or publicly funded projects at the moment on national and European scale," says Georg Greve, President of the FSF Europe. "They tend to be temporally limited partnerships between parties that may have conflicting interests in other fields."
Georg Greve continues: "Therefore it becomes increasingly important to offer solutions that will allow the projects to prosper when that time has run out; because that is usually when the life of a Free Software project has just begun. The FLA offers such a solution."
The first version of the Fiduciary Licence Agreement is now available online at http://fsfeurope.org/projects/fla/
About the Free Software Foundation Europe
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSF Europe) is a charitable non-governmental organization 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 for 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 organization of the Free Software Foundation in the United States.
Contact
FSF Europe: Georg C. F. Greve greve@fsfeurope.org phone: +49-40-23809080 fax: +49-40-23809081