Free Software Foundation Europe

… Mirko Boehm! The election period for this year's Fellowship GA seat has ended on April 29, 2016. There was just one candidate running for the Fellowship GA seat this time. The more we are happy that still 18,9% of our Fellows took their chance to support Mirko Boehm in running for the seat.

In 2016, the FSFE is celebrating 15 years of existence. What started as a small group of volunteers has grown into a European wide movement with actively supporting members in more than 20 countries. We dedicate this birthday to our community, to those who made us grow strong in the past 15 years - with the first ever FSFE summit on September 2 – 4, taking place in the Berlin Congress Center, Germany. If you like to be part of it, save the date and take part in the call for participation.

On 19 April, the European Commission published a communication on "ICT Standardisation Priorities for the Digital Single Market" (hereinafter 'the Communication'). The Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy intends to digitise industries with several legislative and political initiatives, and the Communication is a part of it covering standardisation. In general, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) welcomes the Communication's plausible approach for integrating Free Software and Open Standards into standardisation but expresses its concerns about the lack of understanding of necessary prerequisites to pursue that direction.

23 organisations including the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) joined up in proposing measures to EU institutions and EU member states to avoid negative implications on users' rights and Free Software imposed by the EU Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU.

From teaching people to use encryption for their e-mail, to changing the direction of policy on a European level, the Free Software Foundation Europe worked hard in 2015 to empower users to control technology. With welcome help from our donors and contributors, we set out with ambitious goals for the year. We saw a lot of improvements in how we work, and we ended the year positively with a lot to look forward to in 2016. Please enjoy this story of (some!) of our work over the year, and thank you for helping us make the world a better place!