1. WSIS/WSA Contributory Conference in Vienna, Austria 2. Round table in Venice, Italy 3. Podium discussion about software patents in Kiel, Germany 4. ChaosControl conference in Vienna, Austria 5. WIPO meeting in Geneve, Switzerland 6. GNU/Linuxtag in Karlsruhe, Germany 7. Karlsruhe Memorandum on software patents 8. Europython in Göteborg, Sweden 9. 1ere Conference Nationale de Logiciels Libres, Aleppo, Syria 10. Lobbying against software patents 11. Karsten Gerloff finished internship with FSFE
1. WSIS/WSA Contributory Conference in Vienna, Austria
Beginning of June, the World Summit Award (WSA) contributory conference to the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) took place in Vienna, Austria. Speakers included Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, Professor Joseph Weizenbaum from MIT, John Perry Barlow and FSFE's president, Georg Greve.
During the reception in the Federal Chancellery of Austria and the event, Karin Kosina and Georg Greve spoke with many people inside and outside the Free Software community and gave several radio and video interviews.
2. Round table in Venice, Italy
Stefano Maffulli was present at a round table on the topic "Art culture knowledge democracy". Other participants included the Brasilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, the Italian Creative Commons Public Lead Juan Carlos De Martin and many more.
3. Podium discussion about software patents in Kiel, Germany
The German Federal Small/Medium Enterprises Association (Bundesverband mittelständischer Wirtschaft, BVMW) invited Georg Greve to a podium discussion about software patents in Kiel, Germany where he discussed the sense of patents on software algorithms with Dr. Gaston Willière, Director of the European Patent Office (EPO) Computer Directorate and other panelists from small and medium enterprises: The overall result was that no proprietary or Free Software commercial enterprise has anything to gain from software patents.
4. ChaosControl conference in Vienna, Austria
ChaosControl is a yearly conference organised by the faculty of law at the university of Vienna. This year's topic of the conference was "information freedom", and Karin Kosina spoke about software patents.
5. WIPO meeting in Geneva, Switzerland
On the occasion of the continued Inter-sessional Inter-governmental Meeting (IIM/2) on a Development Agenda for WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation), Georg Greve and Karsten Gerloff once more went to Geneva to support the reform of WIPO. In FSFE's official observer capacity, Georg Greve issued a statement to "include Free Software in all its programmes and activities, educating its member states on the social and economic benefits of the Free Software model." After the very positive response for doing this during the first meeting, Karsten Gerloff once more documented the local proceedings in his blog where you can find more information.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/wipo/statement-20050620.en.html http://www.fsfe.org/Members/gerloff/blog/weblog_view
6. GNU/Linuxtag in Karlsruhe, Germany
The GNU/Linuxtag (sic!) is not only the biggest Free Software event in Europe - it also became a central meeting point for people from Free Software organisations all over the world. The list of representatives that were part of the FSFE booth team is impressive: Bernhard Reiter, Georg Greve, Werner Koch, Joachim Jakobs, Karsten Gerloff, Matthias Kirschner and Volker Dormeyer (all Germany), Karin Kosina, Reinhard Müller (both Austria), and Ciaran O'Riordan (Ireland/Belgium) from the FSFE, Niibe Yutaka, Tanaka Akira, and Ueno Daiki from the Free Software Initiative Japan, Beatriz Busaniche, Federico Heinz (both Argentina), and Fernanda G. Weiden (Brasil) from FSF Latin America, Didier Clerc, Florian Verdet, Mario Fux, and Myriam Schweingruber from FSFE's Swiss associated organisation Wilhelm Tux, Cornelius Wasmund and Michael Kallas as volunteers that helped with the booth, Mohammad Khansari from Iran, Pablo Machón and María Ruiz from Spain and Gareth Bowker from UK.
Once again, Volker Dormeyer, our volunteer booth coordinator, did an amazing job by preparing the booth, organising hotel rooms, finding sponsors for booth hardware and thousands of other things to make this event as successful as it was.
Several people have posted links to photos from the event on their Fellowship blog space.
7. Karlsruhe Memorandum on software patents
On GNU/Linuxtag, the FSFE started an initiative for a memorandum against software patents. More than 200 people spontaneously signed the text, many people already added their signature after it was posted on the web.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/memorandum.en.html
8. Europython in Göteborg, Sweden
At the Europython conference, Hendrik Sandklef held a speech about "Free Software - Free Society" and Swedish team member Mathias Klang talked about the Creative Commons project, in which he also is involved. Both also took part in a panel discussion about software licensing questions.
9. 1ere Conference Nationale de Logiciels Libres, Aleppo, Syria
Karin Kosina opened this follow-up event to the highly successful Free Software workshop in Damascus earlier this year with an introduction to Free Software. In addition to a general outline of our philosophy and vision, the talk focused on Free Software as a way to develop an independent and sustainable IT industry. She also gave several interviews for Syrian TV and radio stations. Karin intends to continue working closely together with Free Software advocates from the region, and had many interesting discussions regarding potential future developments in the Middle East.
10. Lobbying against software patents
The Software Patents directive has been heating up and FSFE's full-time Brussels representative, Ciarán O'Riordan, has been working mostly inside the European Parliament building this month. Besides meeting the MEPs to inform them directly, he has been briefing newly arrived lobbyists to prepare them for their meetings, connecting information from bodies outside the Parliament with the MEPs, and coordinating between FSFE and FFII.
Ciaran also made sure every MEP received a copy of the Karlsruhe Memorandum:
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/memorandum.en.html
And he would like to thank the FSFE translators team for their work on making a pre-vote summary available in non-English languages.
11. Karsten Gerloff finished internship with FSFE
After four very busy months, June was the last month for the internship of Karsten Gerloff, who described his numerous experiences as part of FSFE in his blog. In these four months, Karsten became an integral part of the FSFE Team -- his friendly, reliable and energetic personality earned him great respect and FSFE thanks him for all his good work.
http://www.fsfe.org/Members/gerloff/blog/
If you are a student and can see yourself spend some time becoming part of an extremely busy and lively, multi-national and distributed political non-governmental organisation, you will find more details at
http://fsfeurope.org/contribute/internship.en.html
You can find a list of all FSF Europe newsletters on http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html