Dear FSFE Teams,
many of you have discussed and raised the need for more Free Software legal presence in Europe, or either spoke themselves or heard others speak about this issue in one of our many presentations; and recent news show that the urgency for this is increasing steadily.
When checking my personal archive, I found the first occurence to the idea of establishing a "Freedom Task Force" in my 19 July 2004 presentation at the Free Software Summer Academy in Caceres, Extremadura, Spain.
But while we're asking everyone to keep this to themselves for the next two weeks, we want to let you know in advance that there are very exciting times ahead:
Within the next weeks, the Freedom Task Force will be operational in FSFE's new offices in Zürich, coordinated by Shane Coughlan, who was hired as Freedom Task Force Coordinator.
** About the office:
The FSFE offices, which we've started setting up October 2006, are located at
Free Software Foundation Europe Sumatrastrasse 25 8006 Zürich Switzerland
http://map.search.ch/8006-zuerich/sumatrastr.-25
right next the central train station in Zürich, 15 minutes by train From one of Europe's most central airports. FSFE has a professional 30sqm office and the premises come with a meeting room for up to 10-12 people that FSFE shares with other tenants of the building to hold mini conferences and larger meetings.
These facilities will be the home of the Freedom Task Force, but will also be used for (and are available to) FSFE Team meetings and projects for which group work in the same location is useful or necessary.
So if you want to come to Zürich, organise a small workshop here, or meet with others to work on some project, you're welcome to do so, just get in touch with zrh@office.fsfeurope.org to coordinate the best time and check the availability.
** About the FTF:
The Freedom Task Force will deal with three core areas of activities: Building of Free Software legal competency in Europe, Fiduciary activities for Free Software projects, and enforcement of Free Software licenses, in particular GNU GPL. The main work will be done in volunteer groups, focussed on technology, law, and answering outside requests, coordinated by Shane Coughlan, who will be working full-time with FSFE to take care of these activities.
Furthermore it should be noted that the FTF does not seek to replace existing activities, it seeks to work with them, strengthen them, and help increase their coordination -- so Shane Coughlan will among others work closely with Harald Welte of gpl-enforcements.org. Both will share information freely and support each other.
While the buildup is proceeding as planned, there is still quite a bit of work to do, and Shane Coughlan and myself are quite busy finishing the last details and coordinating the last issues before the FTF goes officially online, which is planned for 13 November 2006, if we can keep the timing.
But before that, we plan to introduce Shane and the FTF to the Fellows of FSFE at the first international meeting of the Fellowship of FSFE, in Bolzano, Southern Tyrol, Italy on 11 November 2006. [1]
The Fellowship of FSFE is seminal for FSFE in various ways. It allowed us to consider starting this initiative, and it will be seminal for its continuing success, so we would like to surprise our Fellows with the announcement, and give them the best first hand opportunity to learn all about the Freedom Task Force and get to know its coordinator.
If you are interested in this particular activity of FSFE, the best thing to do would be to come to Bolzano. [1] If you cannot do that, or wish to help with the technical setup of the facilities, feel free to get in touch with ftf-team@fsfeurope.org -- but please understand that there may be some delay in answers while Shane is scrambling to keep up with all the various things necessary to get things running.
We know that you will feel anxious to share this information with others and would like to let them know about this activity, but in order to not spoil the surprise for the Fellows, and to give the FTF the best start possible, we ask you to please not speak about this before the official announcement has gone out.
Best regards, Georg
[1] http://fsfe.org/events/first_international_annual_meeting_of_the_fellows_of_...