1. Regional and international Fellowship meetings 2. FSFE at the Wizards of OS in Berlin 3. Georg Greve at SERCI workshop in Helsinki, Finland 4. FSFE at WIPO General Assembly 5. Other public appearances
1. Regional and international Fellowship meetings
Regional Fellowship meetings become more and more regular: in Vienna, where the fourth Austrian Fellowship meeting took place, the attendants decided to move from bi-monthly to monthly meetings. In Düsseldorf, the first Fellowship meeting in the Ruhr area was organised, and more will follow.
At the same time, preparations for the first international Fellowship meeting in Bolzano are getting up to speed.
http://fsfe.org/events/first_meeting_of_fellows
2. FSFE at the Wizards of OS in Berlin
The Free Software Foundation Europe participated at Wizards of OS 4 from 14 to 16 September in Berlin, Germany. A team of 12 people - members of the FSFE and volunteers - helped to staff the booth and informed intersted people about Free Software related issues.
During the conference Bernhard Reiter gave an interview about Free Software in general, Free Software in education, science and public, administration, software patents, Free Software buisness models, Digital Restriction Management (DRM), and the work of FSFE. The interview is available online in German.
http://netzpolitik.org/2006/netzpolitik-podcast-mit-bernhard-reiter-zu-freie...
Georg Greve, also gave several interviews. One about Free Software as a cultural technique, how you can help Free Software, and other things is also available online in German.
http://netzpolitik.org/2006/netzpolitik-podcast-mit-georg-greve-von-der-fsfe...
On Friday, Ciaran O'Riordan and Georg Greve held the GPLv3 Workshop in which they informed about current issues and how people can participate in the process.
http://www.wizards-of-os.org/index.php?id=2871
On Saturday Matthias Kirschner participated in the "Show of Free Knowledge" where he explained Free Software using the cooking recipe analogy.
http://www.wizards-of-os.org/index.php?id=2819&L= (German)
3. Georg Greve at SERCI workshop in Helsinki, Finland
FSFE president Georg Greve was invited to participate in a workshop of the Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues (SERCI) about the question of software copyright and patents. As one of the speakers in a policy panel with participants from Nokia, Microsoft and FFII, Georg Greve answered issues on political aspects of software freedom and the Microsoft antitrust case. A short summary can be found in his blog at
http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/piracy_redefined_and_other_ge...
4. FSFE at WIPO General Assembly
End of September was the General Assembly of the WIPO, UN's body for Copyrights, Patents and related issues. This year's assembly had two very contentious to deal with: The future of the Development Agenda to reform WIPO and the potential Broadcasting Treaty. As FSFE president Georg Greve reported on Thursday of the WIPO GA, both seem to evolve in ways that look much better than they could have:
http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/wipo_general_assembly_broadca...
5. Other public appearances
Rainer Kersten, Bernhard Reiter, and Werner Koch represented the FSFE at an event called "come2linux" in Essen, Germany, where they had some interesting conversations with people insterested in the background of Free Software.
Patrick Ohnewein and Reinhard Müller both held a keynote at a Free Software event in Hall/Tirol, Austria, called "Tiroler Linuxtag". Patrick spoke about CoCOS, a competence center for Free Software, and about Free Software in Southern Tyrol. Reinhard gave a general overview on Free Software and informed about the Fellowship.
At this year's annual KDE conference in Dublin, Ireland, Ciarán O'Riordan delivered a keynote on software patents and led a Birds of Feather session on GPLv3.
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html