Introducing FSFE's new president, vice president and executive team
During its General Assembly in Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain, the
members of FSFE elected new coordinators for several of the
organisation's activities, including strategy, legal and executive
coordination.
"The new team will continue FSFE's highly successful work with the
same long-term vision. We will work hard to justify the trust
which the Free Software community is putting into FSFE", says the
new president, Karsten Gerloff.
He continues: "Georg Greve and his team have done splendid work
over the past eight years, building FSFE out of nothing into an
organisation that is highly respected and trusted as an expert
group on Free Software, and as a reliable partner in policy making
and negotiations."
The newly elected Vice President Fernanda Weiden comments: "FSFE
has strong roots in the community. The people in this organisation
have a deep understanding not only of technology itself, but also
of its social and political aspects. Together, we can continue to
develop cutting-edge thinking on how we as a society handle
knowledge, and how we can best make the most of technology."
Christian Holz, appointed Executive Director, says: "Coming from a
business background and having worked with Free Software since the
early nineties, I am excited to become more involved in FSFE. The
team is highly motivated, and we have wonderful volunteers who
support our actions and cause."
Adriaan de Groot, FSFE's designated Freedom Task Force Coordinator:
"As Free Software has become mainstream, education and advice on its
legal aspects are getting more important every day. With the FTF, we
will continue to protect the interests of Free Software projects and
we stand ready to assist the community wherever our help may be
required."
Matthias Kirschner, newly hired to coordinate the Fellowship and the
German team, comments: "The Fellowship is key to building awareness
for Free Software in our society. It has become a magnet for smart,
dedicated people who care about Free Software, and an important
pillar for FSFE's financial stability. We will support FSFE's Fellows
and help them to make an impact wherever they are."
FSFE's founder and former president Georg Greve will remain in the
organisation as a volunteer. He expresses his full support for the new
team. "There is no doubt in my mind that these extraordinary people
are a dream team to ensure both continuity and change towards a
better, larger, and more successful FSFE. The past months of work to
prepare the ground with and for them have been a pleasure, and I look
forward to all the many achievements for software freedom this team is
going to bring about."
More information on the new team:
Karsten Gerloff http://fsfe.org/about/gerloff/
Fernanda Weiden http://fsfe.org/about/nanda/
Christian Holz http://fsfe.org/about/holz/
Adriaan de Groot http://fsfe.org/about/adridg/
Matthias Kirschner http://fsfe.org/about/kirschner/
A personal blog entry by Georg Greve:
http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=354
The new team is available for comments:
Karsten Gerloff +49 176 9690 4298
Fernanda Weiden +41 764 0218 66
Christian Holz +49 178 8359 482
Adriaan de Groot +31 6 2856 1142
Matthias Kirschner +49 176 2952 0450
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit
non-governmental organisation active in many European countries
and involved in many global activities. Access to software
determines participation in a digital society. To secure equal
participation in the information age, as well as freedom of
competition, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues
and is dedicated to the furthering of Free Software, defined by
the freedoms to use, study, modify and copy. Founded in 2001,
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 FSFE.
http://fsfe.org
Press contact: gerloff at fsfeurope.org
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) Newsletter - May 2009
May has been an hot month for us. Not only because the first real sunbeams
start showing up all-over Europe, but mainly because during the whole month
we run our first-ever voting process to elect a Fellow representative to FSFE
General Assembly (GA). Moreover, we published our call for applications as
coordinator and staff positions in our legal department, and our Austrian
team concluded its challenging and satisfying tour across the whole Austria,
by participating to "Linuxwochen Eisenstadt".
Right now, while drafting this newsletter, Matthias Kirschner announced the
result of the election, therefore if you want to know who is the first Fellow
to sit at FSFE's General Assembly, just keep reading!
Giacomo Poderi
1. FSFE participates to eLiberatica 2009, 22-23 May
2. Open Standards update in PDFreaders.org
3. FSFE seeking legal department coordinator and staff positions
4. Bernhard Reiter lectures at University of Stuttgart
5. Looking for input on the backpack of your dreams
6. The Fellowship interviews: Timo Jyrinki
7. FSFE participates at "Linuxwochen Eisenstadt", Austria 8-9 May
8. FSFE welcomes the launch of iUnika Libre UMPC at Libremeeting 2009, 13 May
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
9. Closing the Fellowship vote for the GA seat and announcing the result!
IT HAPPENED IN THE PAST
10. Introducing the FSFE newsletter
UPCOMING EVENTS
11. Fellowship Meeting in Berlin, 11 June
12. Social event co-located with FSFE's GA, Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain, 20 June
13. FSFE participates at "LinuxTag 2009", Berlin, 24-27 June
1. FSFE participates to eLiberatica 2009, 22-23 May
Fellowship posters lined the wall at this year's edition of eLiberatica
in Bucharest where FSFE president Georg Greve analysed the shortcomings
of wide-spread innovation policies in providing a balanced environment
for innovation, competition and governmental procurement in his speech
"Free Software 2009: challenges and opportunities." Organised once more
by an energetic team of volunteers, eLiberatica continues to be a very
important conference in the region, and we intend to participate in
the next one, as we participated in all previous editions.
http://eliberatica.ro
2. Open Standards update in PDFreaders.orgPDFreaders.org was launched less than six months ago, as a Fellowship project
to promote Free Software PDF readers for all the major platforms. Thanks to
the hard work of our Fellows and the cooperation with José E. Marchesi,
GNU PDF team, PDFreaders.org now includes an Open Standard (OS) page.
This is an easy to read and complete instructive page which explains the
nuances of the format from a standards perspective and provide
the technical-legal background for why we are able to support it.
http://pdfreaders.org/os.en.html
3. FSFE seeking legal department coordinator and staff positions
Our organisation is slowly, but constantly growing. To manage the increasing
work load and managerial challenges, we recently started looking for an
Executive Director (ED) who would oversee the daily work of the organisation.
Similarly, our legal department, the Freedom Task Force (FTF), is becoming
a key actor in the European Free Software licensing area, as the success
of the "Second European Licensing and Legal Workshop for Free Software"
shows. Therefore, we also started accepting application for coordinator
and staff positions for the FTF.
http://fsfe.org/news/2009/news-20090515-01.html
4. Bernhard Reiter lectures at University of Stuttgart
On 7 May, Bernhard Reiter gave a talk at the University of Stuttgart about
"Professional Free Software in Economy and Politics" as part of the lecture
"Free/Libre and Open Source Software Engineering". A mixed public of 20
people, made by students, researchers, activists and interested persons
attended the lecture. Bernhard mostly focused on categories of Free Software
licenses, after having provided an overview of Free Software principles,
Open Standards and the problems of software patents.
5. Looking for input on the backpack of your dreams
As a new item to add to our merchandise stock, we are planning to produce
a backpack, which should satisfy the taste and needs of hacktivists.
We would like to encourage the Fellows, an other interested people to give
their input to the details. How should the backpack you always dreamed
of look like? What should it absolutely have? And what not? We are thinking
of high quality material, so it might also be useful to know what price can
be considered reasonable. Feel free to send your ideas to:
dus <AT> office <DOT> fsfeurope <DOT> org
6. The Fellowship interviews: Timo Jyrinki
This month, Stian Rødven Eide interviewed Timo Jyrinki for "The smallest
unit of freedom" series. Beside being a Fellow, Timo is also the team contact
for Ubuntu Finland, the friendly media face of Wikipedia Finland, and founder
of local advocacy project Vapaa Suomi (Libre Finland). In the interview,
Timo tells us about his interest in computer graphics, his involvement
as developer and translator in different projects and organizations. He
shared with Stian and with us his thoughts on user interfaces, the Free
Software situation in Finland and on how businesses should let the
community lead.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=58
7. FSFE participates at "Linuxwochen Eisenstadt", Austria 8-9 May
As conclusive stage of the Austrian events started in March, our Austrian
team manned a booth at "Linuxwochen Eisenstadt", in Eisenstadt, Austria.
Although the event was smaller than the previous ones, our volunteers at
the booth presented our current work and merchandise to the visitors in
a friendly atmosphere. The Austrian team will soon make available pictures,
reports and slides concerning the whole series of events.
8. FSFE welcomes the launch of iUnika Libre UMPC at Libremeeting 2009, 13 May
Georg and Pablo Machón, President and Vice-president of FSFE, participated
at "Libremeeting 2009" which took place on 13 May, in Miraflores de la Sierra,
Spain. Central theme of this year was "business and free software
industry", and it is during the event that iUnika Gyy Minipc was launched.
The Ultra Mobile Personal Computer (UMPC) weights 700 g, it is eco-friendly,
as it is made of bioplastic and is also capable of using solar power.
Thanks to the mediation of our Spanish team and our associate organisation,
the Free Knowledge Foundation (FKF), Iunika has committed to use only
100% Free Software for its product and, in accordance with the manufacturer,
will deliver with each unit our informative material and general Free
Software documentation.
http://www.meeting.libre.org/libremeeting-2009http://www.iunika.com/
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
9. Closing the Fellowship vote for the GA seat and announcing the result!
With the end of May it found conclusion a significant experience both for
us and for the Fellowship. The whole election process that brought us to
identify and to elect the first Fellow to seat at the General Assembly (GA)
reached an end. This experience required us to plan and implement a process
we were not familiar with and, at the same time, demanded the Fellows who
decided to candidate, to put themselves under scrutiny by other Fellows.
Torsten Grote, Jan-Hendrik Peters, Michel Roche and Björn Schießle were the
Fellows standing out from the the candidacy period in March.
During the whole month of May other Fellows had the chance to get to know
them through their blogs and the Fellowship portal, before making up their
minds and voting them.
Of particular interest in the whole process was the "Meet the candidates"
jabber meeting we run on 25 May. Starting from 20:30 and for the following
two hours Björn, Jan-Hendrik, Michel and Torsten answered to Fellows' questions.
The topic of the questions ranged from potential strategies for increasing
Fellowship's efficiency in spreading Free Software to the kind of commitment
the candidates would be able to provide when elected, from the Fellowship's
shortcomings and the strategies to improve it to the candidates' motivations
to run for the elections. The meeting was a success with nearly 30 Fellows
constantly present throughout the whole session and actively participating.
After the conclusion of the meeting, moderated by Matthias Kirschner,
some of the Fellows continued discussing informally on Free Software.
This kind of meeting will definitely become part of the official election
process for the Fellowship's seats and we will also set up similar
meetings more often. We hope you will participate!
It is now time to thank Björn, Jan-Hendrik and Michel for
their involvement in the process and to congratulate with Torsten Grote
for he is the first Fellow elected to represent the Fellowship at our
GA. Congratulation Torsten! See you in Miraflores de la Sierra!
http://fsfe.org/news/2009/news-20090601-01.html
Relevant links:
http://wiki.fsfe.org/election09http://fsfe.org/news/2008/news-20081210-01.htmlhttp://fsfe.org/news/2009/news-20090301-01.htmlhttp://fsfe.org/news/2009/news-20090411-01.html
IT HAPPENED IN THE PAST
10. Introducing the FSFE newsletter
May and June are usually the months for us to have our GA. It is during
the GA held five years ago, on 15 May 2004, that the core members decided
to improve the level of information we provided our public about our activities.
Thus it was decided to start publishing a monthly newsletter and this is
the first we ever published:
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2004q2/000061.html
UPCOMING EVENTS
11. Fellowship Meeting in Berlin, 11 June
The local Fellowship group will meet on 11 June in the NewThinkingStore at
Tucholskystraße 48. There will be discussions about Openstreetmap, "Linuxtag" and
our campaign regarding the "Bundestagswahl". Guests are welcome to join in!
http://wiki.fsfe.org/groups/Berlin
12. Social event co-located with FSFE's GA, Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain, 20 June
On Saturday 20 June in Miraflores de la Sierra, in Spain, we will organise
a social event co-located with our GA, which will take place in the same
place on 19-21 June. Check our news page for the details of the event as
they will be published shortly.
13. FSFE participates at "LinuxTag 2009", Berlin, 24-27 June
We will participate with a booth at "LinuxTag 2009" which takes place at
Berlin's Expo Center. The crew of our booth will explain visitors the
importance of Free Software for society and economy.
http://www.elinuxtag.org/2009/
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://fsfe.org/news/newsletter.html
You can join the Fellowship or find how to support us on
http://fellowship.fsfe.org/joinhttp://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.html
You can order our merchandise at
http://fsfe.org/order/order.html
Copyright (C) FSFE. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire
article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.