See you at FOSDEM 2024!

It is that time of the year again. FOSDEM will take place in Brussels on 3 and 4 February 2024. The Free Software Foundation Europe will be there with most of its staff and some of our volunteers! Are you planning to attend? If so, come meet us at our booth!

FOSDEM brings together thousands of Free Software enthusiasts in Brussels on the first weekend of February each year to discuss Free Software related topics. Once again, we are participating in this two-day event at the Free University of Brussels with our booth, the Legal and Policy Devroom that we co-organize, and other interesting talks. Our team will be there ready to meet you, engage in fruitful discussions and network with the Free Software Community. Come along to check out our socks and t-shirts, along with a bunch of freshly-printed stickers!

If you are planning to come to FOSDEM, we encourage you to join our Matrix FOSDEM 2024 room. Stay up to date and step by at our social gatherings!Indeed, if you are already in Brussels on Friday, you can join our first social gathering and catch up! Meeting point for dinner and drinks at La Mazette at 19:00h. See in Open Street Map.

Saturday, 3 February

From Saturday, as usual, you will find us around, mainly at our booth. If you are a newcomer or a Free Software expert, our team will be happy to meet you at the FSFE booth. Come to chat with us and discuss about Free Software, get informed about our activities, share with us your impressions about our new stickers, and add a new t shirt - or a pair of socks - to your wardrobe. Our booth is the best place to find our team! The FSFE Booth is in Building K level 2. Group A - Community advocacy, 5.

Moreover, Saturday is the day during which our co-organized devroom, the Legal and Policy Issues Devroom, takes place. We have been co-organizing this devroom since 2020 and since then, FOSDEM participants have showed great interest in these topics. Our Legal and Policy Issues Devroom is taking place from 15:00 in Guillissen. One more year, together with our co-organisers Karen Sandler and Bradley Kuhn from Software Freedom Conservancy, and Tom Marble from Informatique, Inc., the FSFE’s Alexander Sander and Matthias Kirschner will be addressing key legal and policy topics related to Free Software.

• 09:00h - 19:00h - FSFE Booth Building K level 2. Group A - Community advocacy, 5.
• 15:00h - 19:00h - Legal & Policy Devroom Room: UA2.220 (Guillissen)
• 15:00h – 15:05h - Welcome to the Legal and Policy Issues Devroom Room: UA2.220 (Guillissen)
• 15:05h – 16:00h - RHEL and CentOS and the growth of openwashing in FOSS Room: UA2.220 (Guillissen)
• 16:00h – 16:30h - Figuring out trademark policy on the fly Room: UA2.220 (Guillissen)
• 16:30h – 17:00h - GPL’s Termination under German Law Room: UA2.220 (Guillissen)
• 17:00h – 17:40h - Further Restrictions, Imposed Downstream on Copyleft, Wreak Havoc: Discussing A Plan of Action Room: UA2.220 (Guillissen)
• 17:40h – 18:10h - The new Swiss Open Source Law: "Public Money Public Code" by default Room: UA2.220 (Guillissen)
• 18:10h - 19:00h - Hot Topics: Organizers of the Legal & Policy DevRoom discuss the issues of the day Room: UA2.220 (Guillissen)

After a long day, what is better than a pizza? Join us to continue discussing about Free Software while we enjoy a yummy pizza. Meeting point at Otomat at 19:30h. See in Open Street Map.

Sunday, 4 February

On Sunday, our booth will be open from 9:00h until 17:00h. You will find there our team and volunteers who would love to explain you our activities. We are also coming with a lot of merchandising, but if you want to secure a t-shirt in your size, the sooner you are coming, the better!

On this day, the "Open Source in the European Legislative Landscape" devroom will take place. This devroom is run by Simon Phipps, Enzo Ribagnac, Maarten Aertsen, Axel Thévernet, Deb Bryant, Alexander Sander, and Gijs Hillenius, and the Community will discuss current policy topics with European legislators. There, Alexander Sander, FSFE's Senior Policy Consultant, will moderate the session on "FOSS Policy Engagement". After it, if you stay in that same room, you will have the chance to listen to Lina Ceballos, FSFE Policy Project Manager, who will open the session on “Public Services interoperability” and the Interoperable Europe Act, followed by a discussion between decision makers and the Community. Later that day, Lucas Lasota, FSFE Programme Manager, together with our Netherlands Coordinator Niko Rikken, will highlight the main challenges for Router Freedom and Device Neutrality in Europe.

Finally, Niharika Singhal, FSFE’s Project Manger, will present the FSFE’s work on AI and license proliferation done within the Zooom initiative. The talk will be presented in the AI and Machine Learning devroom.

• 09:00 – 17:00 - FSFE Booth Building K level 2. Group A - Community advocacy, 5.
• 12:30 – 13:10 - FOSS policy engagement: workshop Room AW1.120
• 13:35 – 14:10 - Public services interoperability: The Interoperable Europe Act; the challenges and opportunities for the free and open source communities Room AW1.120
• 15:10 – 15:20 - Digital Services Interoperability: Intertwining EU telecom law, the DMA, internet devices and Free Software Room AW1.120
• 16:00 – 16:15 - Codes Bound by Ethics: The Rising Tide of Non-Free Software Licenses in AI ecosystems Room UB2.252A (Lameere)

Of course, there will be many more interesting talks going on! You can check the schedule of the two day conference in the FOSDEM website.

Let’s close this two intense but insightful days with our last community gathering. Meeting point at 18:00 at the Cafè La Maison du Peuple. See in Open Street Map.

Give us a hand!

Although we hope we do not have a lot of merchandising left at the end of the conference, tearing down the booth is usually not an easy task so we might need extra hands on Sunday. Contact our Office Assistant Francesca fi@fsfe.org if you can join us!

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Meet Jannes and Aaron, YH4F 2023 participants

Find out more about the Youth Hacking 4 Freedom participants of the 2023 edition. We are starting this series talking with Jannes and Aaron: both worked on projects related to school education, and it is particularly interesting to see how these two projects approached different aspects with a similar spirit.

Aaron and Jannes are two German students, from North Westphalia and near Hamburg, respectively. They are 18 and 19 years old, and during Youth Hacking 4 Freedom 2023 they created School Hub and Nanoly+Shigoto, two projects that they intend to continue to develop.

School Hub is an unified platform for school information both for students and teachers. It seeks to help the average student to use data more quickly, while being an alternative to similar proprietary apps. Nanoly and Shigoto are designed to have a more efficient and tailored environment for managing homework and study material. In this interview, we will learn more about them!

FSFE: Hi to Aaron and Jannes! Before diving into the details, can you introduce yourselves?

Aaron: I’m Aaron. I’m 18 years old and I come from North Westphalia, in Germany. I’ve been interested in computers from a very early age and it’s currently what I do as a hobby. It’s my passion.

Jannes: My name is Jannes. I’m from Germany and I live near Hamburg. I’m currently 19 years old and I’m in the 13th grade, so this is my last year of school. I like programming. I also do sports: I like cycling a lot, and I practice Aikido in my free time.

FSFE: Could you introduce us to the project you developed for YH4F 2023?

Aaron: My project is called “School Hub”, it aims to be a unified platform for school information, both for students and teachers.

School Hub’s “news” section (Neuigkeiten)

Very early in my time trying out Flutter [coding framework], I was incredibly interested and passionate about it. At the same time, the current software my school uses is proprietary and it’s crap. So I asked my school: “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if our school had a mobile app with these features and resources? I think it would be cool!” The idea was shot down for privacy reasons or because they did’t want to get involved.

That’s what made me think: “I need an app that I can open in the morning and I don’t have to sign in every morning; where I can see instantly for me which lessons are cancelled, substituted or otherwise if something special going on”. Nowadays we use Microsoft Teams, but all the data is communicated through chats: it’s not really stored anywhere properly. So the main point of the app is to take all the data it can collect, and present it in a nice way.

School Hub’s “substitutions” (Vertretungen) section

Jannes: I developed two sibling projects: Nanoly, a file manager focused for school usage, and Shigoto, a to-do list manager. By integrating them, my purpose was to provide students with a dashboard to manage their school work.

I’m working on my laptop most of the time, and I needed some sort of organization, as well as a tool for writing homework. I had very specific needs and use cases in mind, such as opening files with custom key-bindings, touch support, annotating PDFs, and other things. So I started building the UI and then writing the code for it. I learned a lot of new things along the way!

Nanoly’s main page

My main idea was to reduce the number of windows I have open on my screen in order to be more productive. I haven’t quite achieved this, because I decided to develop two parallel projects. But at least both concepts fit very well on one screen, and I don’t need anything else except the application that’s open to edit files, for example.

An example of the Shigoto dashboard

FSFE: Not any kind of project, your projects are Free Software! How did you get in touch with the movement?

Jannes: I first got into free software during the first covid lockdown. A friend convinced me to switch to Linux and invited me into a group chat with people, who all work/study in the IT sector. I joined their video calls and learned a lot from them about Linux, self-hosting, and other great free and open source software. During the same period, I also got into programming, and participated in some competitions. One of the people from the chat group told me about the YH4F competition, where I then learned how to make my own software into Free Software.

Aaron: My family like to joke about being careful to give me a screwdriver, because otherwise I would disassemble all the devices in the house. I have been tinkering with computers since I was little. As I got older, I played around with it. I experimented with programming, trying out different kinds of software. And eventually I wrote one by my own.

At some point I became curious about installing Ubuntu. So I did. Later, I tried several different distributions. I switched off Windows completely. And I appreciate that my operating system doesn’t nag me all the time.

FSFE: You developed your software during YH4F 2023, where you also had the chance to meet other young developers as well as more senior Free Software contributors. How was this experience?

Aaron: One thing I really enjoyed about the competition was the generous amount of time compared to my previous involvement in events or competitions. Most of the time, I have participated in hackathons where I only had a couple of days at most. It is just enough for a really small and light proof of concept. By putting more time and energy into my own project, I was able to make it much better. I also enjoyed the frequent meetings we had, as well as some guest presentations from some prominent people. It’s always nice to see how people do their things, which is something I don’t get to see very often.

Jannes: There was quite a lot I learned! By participating also to the 2022 edition, it was such a long time that I invested into putting both competitions together, three projects in different areas. I learnt a bit about those areas. Just a little bit about the whole context, but a lot for me. I was able to help improve my coding skills. In terms of the competition itself, it was really great. There was a chat room, there were the monthly calls and it was super easy to interact with the other participants, which was very fun. I always felt particularly taken care of by the organizers, because we always had a way of contacting them to get some help if we needed it. The monthly calls were great to stay up to date and keep in touch with the others.

FSFE: The competition has finished, but life goes on. What are the future plans both for your project and for you?

Jannes: First of all, I want to finish school and apply to the University of Hamburg. I hope to be accepted. Between the end of school and the start of the first semester there are about 21 weeks that I have to fill somehow. During this time, I really want to push my personal projects, because I still have a lot of them on my to-do list. I also want to try and get a small job where I can work in a team with others, hopefully coding, or maybe software testing.

Aaron: Once I have a bit more free time and less stress around me, I can definitely see myself working on this project and seeing if I can make it more functional, ideally making it a little companion. Apart from the app, I really hope that I can continue with my studies. At the same time, I hope to be able to continue coding and developing free applications as a hobby, because that’s what I enjoy doing.

FSFE: Thank you Jannes and Aaron. We wish you a great future and a lot of success with your projects!

The new edition of Youth Hacking 4 Freedom has just started its coding period! Participants registration are still open, so you can still take part in the 2024 edition. Check out the YH4F webiste to find out all the details about this competition!

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The FSFE partners with the Edulife Foundation to introduce Italian students to Free Software

In the framework of the ITS Academy LAST project, the Free Software Foundation Europe and the Edulife Foundation, the operational partner of ITS Academy LAST, have developed a two-year agreement to deliver educational content to students about Free Software legal aspects, policy and public awareness.

During SFSCon 2023, the FSFE and Edulife Foundation kicked off a collaboration project to raise awareness about the benefits of Free Software to the next generation of innovators. The educational initiative aims to expose the students to Free Software, so they can positively contribute to how technology is developed. More than 50 students of the ITS Academy LAST were able to attend the kick-off at SFSCon, having the opportunity to listen to talks about Free Software as well as engage in discussions with experts from the FSFE and other speakers and enthusiasts.

For more than 20 years, the Edulife Research Foundation has been working to guide local students and educators in Italy towards the realisation of their professional and personal life goals. One the leading initiative is the “Observatory and Laboratory for Free Software”. Antonio Faccioli, the scientific coordinator of the digital courses of the ITS Academy LAST, and a Free Software enthusiast, was the idealizer of this partnership.

This partnership represents an important step for the FSFE to engage with students and educational communities in Italy. It is important to convey to next generation of professionals the message of Free Software, especially in broader contexts the mean of technology in a democratic society.

The IT Free Software Knowledge Project

Known as “IT Free Software Knowledge Project”, this two-year partnership started in November 2023. As part of this studies academic program, the FSFE has delivered educational content about Free Software, with a focus on Free Software legal issues, policy aspects and public awareness in the form of lectures. Besides, the students attended Free Software conferences, such as the SFSCon, where they will be able to have a more practical approach and the opportunity to get in touch with leading experts of the Free Software world.

Should you want to receive further information on the IT Free Software Knowledge Project do not hesitate to get in touch with us at contact@fsfe.org. We are always on the look out for partners who share the same goals to foster a culture of Free Software on the territory. If you want to share a project idea please do not hesitate to contact us.

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NGI: € 21.6 million in grants for Free Software

The Next Generation Internet (NGI) Zero consortium, of which the FSFE is a partner, has just unveiled the NGI0 Commons Fund. This new public fund will award 21.6 million euro to small and medium R&D projects developing Free Software technologies that can improve the Internet.

The Next Generation Internet Zero consortium aims to build a more resilient, trustworthy, and open Internet that empowers end-users to control technology. Since 2018, FSFE has been a partner of this coalition, led by the NLNet Foundation, providing support to several hundreds of Free Software projects with their legal and licensing issues. The FSFE has developed workflows and best practices for such projects. We have also been promoting the REUSE specification as a way to simplify copyright and licence compliance for software projects.

The NGI Commons Fund will award over 21 million euro in small and medium R&D grants to Free Software projects starting in 2024, until 2027. This makes the fund the single largest investment made by the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative since it became operational in 2019.

Simplified granting process

The grants (between 5,000 and 50,000 euro) are available to individuals and organisations of any type. One requirement for receiving a grant is that the project outcomes must be made publicly available under a Free Software license. For projects with high scalable potential, a scale-up programme is also available.

The scope of the open calls is broad, meaning that those working on technology commons across the entire technological spectrum can apply: operating systems, front and backend apps, AI, open hardware, encryption and security technologies, and many more areas are included.

The first call of the NGI Zero Commons Fund opens on 1 February 2024, with a deadline of 1 April 2024 12:00 CET (noon). It will be followed by new opportunities every two months until the budget is fully allocated.

Besides financial support, the projects can count on a range of support services to improve the quality, maturity, and deployability of their efforts. Practical services such as security, accessibility audits, and packaging help to improve the quality and promote adoption of the projects. Services like mentoring and diversity management aim to strengthen the communities behind them or, in the case of the FSFE, to help with legal and licensing questions.

“We believe the NGI0 Commons Fund to be a crucial stepping stone for promoting the development of Free Software in Europe. Free Software is key for helping people to control technology in a democratic society. Fostering digital commons through these investments will render technologies more accessible and the internet less dependent on proprietary solutions”, Gabriel Ku Wei Bin, FSFE’s Legal Programme Manager.

About NGI Zero

The FSFE is a consortium member of the Next Generation Internet (NGI), supported by the European Commission's DG CNECT. The NGI has the mission to re-imagine and re-engineer the Internet to shape a value-centric, human and inclusive society for all. NGI Zero is a dynamic coalition of not-for-profit organisations founded in 2019 that together fund and support the development of technology commons as building blocks for the future of the Internet. NGI Zero encompasses a grant mechanism providing resources for several hundreds of Free Software projects.

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Podcast episodes +++ Router Freedom tech wiki +++ Become our policy intern

We are starting 2024 with a lot of energy, looking for a policy intern and with great news: two new SFP episodes, the Router Freedom tech wiki, the ‘Ada & Zangemann’ ebook is free of charge in French, and we are looking forward to celebrating ‘I Love Free Software Day’ on 14 February!

Table of contents

1. Software Freedom Podcast: Listen to our episodes about ‘What is Free Software’ and ‘Public Money? Public Code!’
2. Router Freedom: Good news: our tech wiki is now online! Bad news: Austria goes against Router Freedom
3. Spread the Word! We are looking for a policy intern
4. Unblocking User Freedom: The right to use adblockers
5. ‘Ada & Zangemann’: What pupils write about proprietary software and why it motivates the author
6. Italian Community Meeting 2023
7. Get Involved: I Love Free Software Day
8. Quote of the Month
9. Contribute to our Newsletter

Software Freedom Podcast: Listen to our episodes about ‘What is Free Software’ and ‘Public Money? Public Code!’

During the past weeks we published two new episodes of our Software Freedom Podcast!

In our episode number 23, some FSFE staffers play a guessing game with terms related to Free Software. This is the perfect episode for you to learn more about it and get a better understanding of some terms that you might not use daily.

Before that, we talked with Johannes Näder, Senior Policy Project Manager at the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), about "Public Money? Public Code!", in our 22nd episode.

Router Freedom: Good news: our tech wiki is now online! Bad news: Austria goes against Router Freedom

Have you ever thought about installing your own router but never had the chance to learn how to do it? Now you can with our Router Freedom tech wiki, which provides information on the necessary steps you need to use to connect your own router! With the help of our team of volunteers from the Netherlands, you can check all the necessary steps to start using your own home router. Our policy and advocacy work continues, notwithstanding some regulatory hurdles. The Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications decided not to regulate the network operators with regard to Router Freedom, allowing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to impose their equipment on consumers. We will continue to seek alternative ways to promote Router Freedom in the country.

Spread the Word! We are looking for a policy intern

The FSFE team is looking for a motivated intern to support the FSFE’s policy activities and contribute to our work to empower people to control technology. The person will work 35 hours per week with our team in the FSFE Berlin office for a period of six months.

"I joined FSFE as an intern in March 2023 because I have always been interested in European politics and because the slogan "Public Money? Public Code!" resonated deeply with my beliefs. The experience at FSFE has been great: I learned how to make our voice heard and I am proud of being part of a community of many amazing people working and volunteering for software freedom.” - Dario Presutti, former policy intern

Unblocking User Freedom: The right to use adblockers

Companies increasingly aim to control how users interact with their content online, threatening user freedom. As more companies crack down on browser extensions and other third-party software used by internet users to customise their experiences, two recent German court cases on adblockers could strengthen the legal case for user control over technology.

Interesting? Read our news item to find out more about this topic.

"Ada & Zangemann": What pupils write about proprietary software and why it motivates the author

Pupils all over the world are learning about the story of "Ada & Zangemann - A Tale of Software, Skateboards and Raspberry Ice Cream": it is encouraging to see how new generations are inspired to start coding and to write to Zangemann about his behaviour. Check out this message from our president, Matthias Kirschner, to our readers.

The story of "Ada & Zangemann" is now available in French and, thanks to the French Ministry of Education, you can download the ebook free of charge at https://cfeditions.com/ada(FR). And if you want to read the story about how this book was translated into French by some students, do not forget to read the quote there (FR) from Alexis Kauffmann, head of the Free Software and educational resources project at the Ministry of Education and Youth and founder of Framasoft.

Italian Community Meeting 2023

More than 20 volunteers and associations' members from all over Italy, online and in person, gathered in Bolzano for the Italian Community Meeting during SFSCON 2023 to discuss the future of Free Software in Italy. You can enjoy the recording of the workshop in our Peertube Channel.

A sneak peek at the main topics discussed by our participants: Free Software in schools, the creation of a toolkit which can be adopted by all organizations to encourage the use of Free Software, and raising awareness about Free Software with the general public through simplified information!

Get Involved: I Love Free Software Day

On 14 February, we gather to celebrate "I Love Free Software Day". Join our local groups' events on that date, organise your own gathering, and/or send a message to thank the contributors of the Free Software project you really like.

For “I Love Free Software Day 2024: Forging the future with Free Software”, we want to focus on engaging young generations in Free Software as they are the ones who will shape the next years. For more information, ideas, and inspiration check out the 'I Love Free Software' activity page!.

Quote of the Month

“Dear Zangemann, I used to like your inventions in fact I still like them but you are starting to use them in the wrong way. It’s not fair that some people have to eat, drink and listen to music they don’t like. When you do that to people can see you inside and how selfish you are. It’s much better if you share your inventions because it doesn’t mean they are stealing it, it means they just are borrowing it, and making it better. So please share your ideas. It will make our planet much better.”

— Nikita (from one of the letters sent to Zangemann)

Contribute to our Newsletter

We would love to hear from you. If you have any thoughts, pictures, or news to share, please send them to us at newsletter@fsfe.org. You can also support us, contribute to our work, and join our community. We would like to thank our community and all the volunteers, supporters, and donors who make our work possible, with a special mention to our translators who make it possible for you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.

Your editors, Ana and Tommi

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