Happy birthday FSFE

Opening my inbox this morning revealed the arrival of news from Europe (Not Brussels though; no need to shudder and fear the worst! Ed.😉 ). Yesterday, 11th March, saw the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) celebrating its 2^3 (eighth) birthday. Over that time, the FSFE has been working for basic rights and freedoms in a society increasingly driven by software.

“The world of Free Software has developed dramatically since FSFE was founded and FSFE was a core part of that change,” says FSFE’s Georg Greve. “Free Software has won its first anti-trust action. We helped to bring issues of interoperability and standardisation to the forefront of the debate, with OOXML being the culmination of this debate. As a consequence, more governments and public institutions have begun to ask questions about the sovereignty of their software and data.” (including the UK government. Ed.)

Over the last 8 years, FSFE has been working intensively at the United Nations, promoted Free Software interests at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), contributed to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), taken part in discussions at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and taught World Bank project managers about Free Software. FSFE has also worked with the European Commission in its anti-trust work and assisted the Commission by offering input into policy-setting initiatives.

There’s more information in the full FSFE press release. In the meantime keep up the good work FSFE; we at Bristol Wireless wish you many happy returns. 🙂