The Free Software Foundation Europe e.V. (FSFE) is an organization that supports

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

and all aspects of the

free software movement The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for user (computing), software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets thes ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, with registered chapters in several European countries. It is a registered voluntary association (German: ''

eingetragener Verein An (; "registered association" or "incorporated association"), abbreviated (), is a legal status for a civil registration, registered voluntary association in Germany. While any group may be called a , registration as confers many legal bene ...

'') incorporated under

German law The law of Germany (), that being the modern German legal system (), is a system of civil law which is founded on the principles laid out by the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, though many of the most important laws, for example ...

. FSFE was founded in 2001. It is the European sister organization of the USbased

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

(FSF), although each foundation exists as a separate organization. Following the return of Richard Stallman to the FSF in 2021, the FSFE declared themselves "unable to collaborate" with the FSF.

Goals

FSFE believes that access to (and control of)

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

determines who may participate in a digital society. Consequently, FSFE believes, the freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software, as described in The Free Software Definition, are necessary for equal participation in the

Information Age The Information Age is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during the Industrial Revolution, to an economy centered on information technology ...

. The focus of FSFE's work is political, legal, and social, with the aim of promoting free software and the ethical, philosophical, social, political and commercial values that it implements. In particular, it: * is actively promoting free software politically as a

-based global competence center in dialog with politicians and press * follows and seeks to influence legal and political activities that are contrary to the goals and values of Free Software * provides a contact point and orientational help on all issues regarding Free Software * works closely together with lawyers active in the Free Software area in universities and practices in order to follow and influence the legal discourse; also, it cooperates with lawyers throughout Europe to maximize the legal security of Free Software * supports, coordinates and develops projects in the Free Software area, especially the

GNU Project The GNU Project ( ) is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and Computer hardware, computing dev ...

; it also provides computer resources to Free Software developers to enable them to continue their developments * helps companies to develop business models based on Free Software or fit existing models to it; it encourages companies in their evolution to Free Software; to make it easier for companies based on Free Software to be commercially successful, the FSF Europe also seeks to broaden the market for Free Software * helps coordinating and networking other initiatives in the Free Software area

Example projects

Projects undertaken by FSFE include: *"Public Money? Public Code!" campaign. In September 2017, FSFE launched the "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign by publishing an open letter signed by other organizations and calling for European and national Members of Parliament to “Implement legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software license”. Among the 150 signing organizations (as of July 2018), the campaign is supported by digital rights NGOs like

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

Open Source Initiative The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a California public benefit corporation "actively involved in Open Source community-building, education, and public advocacy to promote awareness and the importance of non-proprietary software". Governance The ...

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties. It provides funds for legal defense in court, ...

, EDRi,

April April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian and Julian calendars. Its length is 30 days. April is commonly associated with the season of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is the ...

Chaos Computer Club The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is Europe's largest association of Hacker (computer security), hackers with 7,700 registered members. Founded in 1981, the association is incorporated as an ''eingetragener Verein'' in Germany, with local chapters ...

, and national chapters of Wikimedia (

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

and

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

) as well as organizations responsible for the development and maintenance of Free and Open Source Software like

OpenSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open-source software, free and open-source Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. It is offered in two main variations: ''Tumbleweed'', an upstream rolling release distribution, and ''Leap'', a stable r ...

, Fedora,

Tor Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Toronto, Canada ** Toronto Raptors * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor ...

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

and Videolan. The campaign was publicly endorsed by more than 18 000 individuals (as of July 2018) including public figures such as

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs. Born in 1983 in Elizabeth ...

, Francesca Bria ( CTO of the city of Barcelona) as well as public administrations like the City of Barcelona. *

Software patents A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, library, user interface, or algorithm. The validity of these patents can be difficult to evaluate, as software is often at once a product of engineering, something ...

in Europe: According to the FSFE, software patents for Europe are currently being pushed forward actively by a lobby gathering around the European patent office and the

Business Software Alliance The Software Alliance, also known as BSA, is a trade group of business software companies established in 1998. Its principal activity is trying to stop copyright infringement of software produced by its members. It is a member of the International ...

(BSA), which represents the interests of the largest US companies. Software patents are considered by the FSFE to be a menace to society and economy and FSF Europe is actively involved in the resistance to such plans. * European Union v. Microsoft: In 2001 the European Union, through the DG Competition of the European Commission (led by Prof.

Mario Monti Mario Monti (; born 19 March 1943) is an Italian politician, economist and academic who served as the Prime Minister of Italy from 2011 to 2013, leading a Technocratic government (Italy), technocratic government in the wake of the European sov ...

), started investigating Microsoft's dominant position in the desktop operating systems. The Free Software Foundation Europe was invited by the EC to represent the stance of the Free Software movement. In 2004 FSFE was admitted as an intervening third party in the appeal against the decision of the Commission and, also representing the Samba Team, was one of the only two interveners to remain active in the proceedings from start to end. It provided strong evidence in court thanks to the effort of volunteers like Andrew Tridgell, Jeremy Allison, Volker Lendeke and their lawyer, Carlo Piana. The case is now considered one of the leading cases in European antitrust. *

World Intellectual Property Organization The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; (OMPI)) is one of the 15 specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN). Pursuant to the 1967 Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO was created to pr ...

: The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is one of 16 specialized agencies of the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

system of organisations. Its role is to administer 24 international treaties dealing with different aspects of limited monopolies on knowledge. As an observer to WIPO and together with a global coalition of other players with similar goals, FSFE is working towards reshaping it as a "World Intellectual Wealth Organization." *FSFE Legal Team (previously known as the Freedom Task Force): The legal branch of FSFE that helps individuals, projects, businesses and government agencies find Free Software legal information, experts and support. FSFE Legal provides compliance, best practice, procurement and governance resources in-house, in partnership with FSFE's associate organizations and through its extensive network of contacts (including th
Legal Network
. Its mission is to spread knowledge, solve problems and encourage the long-term growth of Free Software. The FSFE Legal Team is also responsible for maintaining the Fiduciary License Agreement, a balanced Contributor License Agreement that makes sure the project remains Free Software. *The REUSE Software: This project provides a consistent way to add licensing and copyright information to the source code of a project. It is based on the SPDX license identifier and allows automating many processes involved in licensing compliance. REUSE is currently being adopted by many big open source projects, for example

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

. Each month, FSFE publishes a newsletter, in multiple languages (including English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish), of their activities that can be mentioned in public.

Structure

From FSFE's published "Self-Conception": Internally, the FSFE has a consensus-oriented team structure, in which participation is determined by each person's willingness to participate and do work. A democratic and representative-democratic model functions as a fallback when the consensus-based approach accomplishes no results, or when a quick decision is needed.

Legal structure

The FSFE has a modular legal structure with a central "Hub" organization and the possibility of local legal bodies, called "chapters". The Hub is a charitable association ("e.V.") which is registered in

. As well as being in regular contact with other FSFs — Free Software Foundation India (FSFI),

Free Software Foundation Latin America Free Software Foundation Latin America (FSFLA) is the Latin American sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation. It is the fourth sister organisation of FSF, after Free Software Foundation Europe and Free Software Foundation India. It ...

(FSFLA) — FSFE has a structure of organizations which are official associates. These are mostly national-level free software groups.

Awards

In 2010, FSFE received the

Theodor Heuss Theodor Heuss (; 31 January 1884 – 12 December 1963) was a German liberal politician who served as the first president of West Germany from 1949 to 1959. His civil demeanour and his cordial nature – something of a contrast to German nati ...

Medal in recognition of its work for freedom in the information society. The medal is awarded once a year in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

by a non-partisan foundation named after

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

's first president.

References

External links

* {{FOSS Free Software Foundation Digital rights organizations Information technology organizations based in Europe Non-profit organisations based in Hamburg Organizations established in 2001