Georg C. F. Greve (born 10 March 1973 in

Helgoland Heligoland (; german: Helgoland, ; Heligolandic Frisian: , , Mooring Frisian: , da, Helgoland) is a small archipelago in the North Sea. A part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein since 1890, the islands were historically possessions ...

, Germany) is a software developer, physicist, author and currently co-founder and president at Vereign. He has been working on technology politics since he founded the

Free Software Foundation Europe The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is an ''eingetragener Verein'' (registered voluntary association) under German law. It was founded in 2001 to support all aspects of the free software movement in Europe, with registered chapters in seve ...

(FSFE) in 2001. Greve has been working full-time as president for FSFE since early 2001. In June 2009, he handed over the presidency of the FSFE to Karsten Gerloff. His responsibilities for FSFE included coordination of the general assembly, supporting local representatives in their work, working on political and legal issues as well as projects and giving speeches or informing journalists to spread knowledge about

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

. In addition, Georg Greve also worked as a consultant, representing

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

in the

OOXML Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version a ...

standardisation process at

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

and as a project reviewer for the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

. Greve is married and lives in Switzerland. In 2010 Greve was awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany (Verdienstkreuz am Bande).

Career

Greve has a degree of Physics in

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. ...

, with physical oceanography and

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...

as minor fields of study from the computer science department of the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vo ...

. His interdisciplinary diploma thesis was written in the field of nanotechnology on scanning probe microscopy. Greve's first software development was when he was 12 years old. His first publication of a program was in a professional journal in 1992. He partly financed his studies when he managed the software development to evaluate SQUID-sensor data in the biomagnetometic laboratory at the

University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf The University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (german: Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE)) is the teaching hospital of the University of Hamburg and the largest hospital in Hamburg, Germany. The UKE has 1,738 beds and 121 day-care p ...

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, Germany. In 1993 he came across

, 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 computing devices by collaborat ...

and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

. In 1998, he was the European speaker for the

and began writing the "Brave GNU World", a monthly column on free computer

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

featuring interesting

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

projects each month. It was published on the Internet in as many as ten languages, and in international printed magazines including the German ''

Linux-Magazin ''Linux Magazine'' is an international magazine for Linux software enthusiasts and professionals. It is published by the former Linux New Media division of the German media company Medialinx AG. The magazine was first published in German in 199 ...

''. The name ''Brave GNU World'' is a reference to

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxle ...

's novel ''

Brave New World ''Brave New World'' is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hiera ...

''. In early 2001, he initiated the

(FSFE or FSF Europe), the first

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

outside the United States of America and, , the only transnational Free Software Foundation. Greve was invited as an expert to the “Commission on Intellectual Property Rights” of the

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, and represented the coordination circle of German

civil society Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

(UN)

World Summit on the Information Society The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was a two-phase United Nations-sponsored summit on information, communication and, in broad terms, the information society that took place in 2003 in Geneva and in 2005 in Tunis. WSIS Forums have ...

(WSIS) as part of the German governmental delegation. He has also networked with civil society

working group A working group, or working party, is a group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. The groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. The term can sometimes refer to an interdis ...

s at the European level as well as for the thematic working group on

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from othe ...

s (PCT) and free software. Between 2010 and 2017, he was CEO as well as

president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...

and, later, member of the board for Kolab Systems AG in

Küsnacht Küsnacht is a municipality in the district of Meilen in the canton of Zurich in Switzerland. History Küsnacht is first mentioned in 1188 as ''de Cussenacho''. Earliest findings of settlement date back to the stone age. There are also finding ...

, Switzerland, the developers of the

Kolab Kolab is a free and open source groupware suite. It consists of the Kolab server and a wide variety of Kolab clients, including KDE PIM-Suite Kontact, Roundcube web frontend, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Lightning with SyncKolab extensio ...

server. In late 2017, Greve co-founded a company called Vereign to enable authentic communication through blockchain federated networks with Claus H. Bressmer.

References

External links

Georg Greve's Blog

Fellowship interview with Georg Greve about background of FSFE (March 2009)

during the UN WSIS Contributory Conference on ICT & Creativity
Video and audio recordings of Greve's introduction to the 3rd international GPLv3 conference
22 June 2006
2007 pre-FOSDEM interview

Georg Greve's FSFE Team Page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Greve, Georg C. F. Copyright activists Free software programmers GNU people 1973 births Living people University of Hamburg alumni Recipients of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany