"Hello all, I hope all of you enjoyed the meeting like I enjoyed.
First of all, here's is the report of the first meeting, for the people who don't read that
The First Fellowship meeting in Zürich was a chance for everyone to get to know each other. It took place in FSFE's Zürich Office on the 18^th of July, around some peanuts, crisps, beers and other drinks.
Everybody there was very motivated and discussed about ways to contribute to spread free software..
Many people were there because they were searching for increased Free Software Activism on the political side.
We discussed about the equation free = free as a beer. It's clear that we can't promote advertising based on that. The way to use Free Software implies training costs because you change your work environment and the habits you had with proprietary software. These training costs are hidden by the “free as a beer” concept. It also misses the point of freedom. We must rather promote the “free as a speech” concept: community, freedom and reliability of open standards with the time. We spoke about how free software allows you to control your system and the negative effects of monopolies on the economical side.
We decided to get in touch with other organizations in Switzerland which also promote Free Software because we noticed that the IT-specialised press here doesn't speak much about Free Software. We though about getting in touch with the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” to show their readers that an alternative exists to proprietary software.
We agreed that the FSFE can be the handling point on the political tracks and we decided to open the next fellowship meeting in Zürich to non-fellows. There is a possibility to do this meeting on the 14^th of August with the local Ubuntu group, which is now changing into a general free software discussion group.
Now is the report about our second meeting. We were 9 people in the FSFE Zürich Office. The first and biggest news is this one: The Fiduciary License Agreement is a legal safety net to keep KDE's licensing effective in cases where a change of licensing is required (for example in the unlikely case that the GPL is void) and the contributor holding the copyright of a certain piece of code is not able to change the license of her work. The FLA is in no way binding, but a suggestion by the KDE e.V. to mitigate the risk of possible problems surrounding copyright assignment and licensing. It is left to each individual copyright holder whether or not to sign the agreement. Details on all the above points will be publised on the KDE e.V. website soon.
So with the F.L.A the KDE is used as a platform and will build an explicit promise to build the future.
Andreas and Nick asked about writing some articles about this subject (and, why not, about other subjects concerning the FSFE) in the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung". We must have a core-group to reach some aims. Andreas asked about where to find advertising materials. Flyers and leaflets to print already exists on the fellowship wiki : http://fsfeurope.org/documents/leaflets and http://wiki.fsfe.org/Leaflets. Actually with your fellowship password you can contribute to the wiki ! http://wiki.fsfe.org/
Don't forget that you have, with your fellowship password, the permission to have your own blog about freedom and Free Software issues on https://www.fsfe.org/
You can read Ben's essay about freedom in a near future on his blog : https://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/morant/geek_free_and_funny and you can freely discuss about that
FSFE endorses Free Software, but exactly it endorses the value of Freedom in Software rather than free code.
We can take part to the wiki : http://wiki.fsfe.org/ . We must stay connected each other and know what the other people do. Actually, we need more information about yourself. It's why I ask you all to give me:
Your name and first name: Your age: Your occupation: Your wishes, what you would like to do within the Fellowship, especially within the Zürich Fellowship:
-"What do we need to do ?"
Provide information (to the medias, to the friends, to the businesses around you...). Act politically (we don't mean political party, we rather speak about political administration and public services) But also for Politicians, the philosophy behind Free Software is not good enough. To promote Free Software, we need business studies : what does actually bring Free Software to the administration ? Answer: At the long term it is the best solution. Well, where is the proof ? But must the Zürich fellows be like a competence center to analyse the needs of the administration ? No, it's too ambitious. The FSFE can be considered as a competence center, not the Fellowship. But the Fellows are the link between the FSFE and the whole world. We need to know what Switzerland needs. The Fellowship can promote education and teaching about Free Software
It's why we can organise an event for the Software Freedom Day on the 20th of September (see http://softwarefreedomday.org/), surely with some other groups promoting Free Software around Zürich ( the Ubuntu-team ?). We must provide some information's stuff (and some advertising) to the media. We have to organise that quite quickly, because the next Zürich fellowship meeting will be held about one week before the Software Freedom Day. Actually, it's why this mailing list was created. So please put your ideas and your plans here in order to organise a great event and to be involved during the Software Freedom Day ! Thanks for all who came tonight, Have a nice and sunny week-end !
Ben