With sights like the old town of San Sebastián and the Guggenheim museum at Bilbao, the Basque country in northern Spain is certainly worth a visit. But the reason that I and FSFE staffer Rainer Kersten spent a week there had nothing to do with old houses, art or pintxos. (Well, *almost* nothing to do Read more »
Danish ministry doesn’t tell parliament about Free Software savings. The Danish Parliament asked the ministry of Finance to prepare a report on the country’s police budget. The ministry commissioned the report to a consultancy. The consultants came back saying that a migration to OpenOffice would save the police some 13 million Euro. The migration would Read more »
Expectations were high for Neelie Kroes‘ speech at yesterday’s OFE Summit, and she delivered. This was the first time that the European Commission’s vice president talked about the Digital Agenda which she recently published. I was also curious about any news on EIFv2 after the heated battles of the last months. Her speech was the Read more »
Last Saturday was a great day for FSFE. We received the Theodor Heuss Medal for our “extraordinary work for equitable participation in the information society”! This is a huge honour for FSFE, and it was great to be there, in front of an audience of hundreds of people, to accept this award. The medal highlights Read more »
On Friday, FSFE’s Hugo Roy posted an open letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, asking him why Apple was claiming to like Open Standards while using H.264 as a standard for video compression on Apple’s devices. Jobs replied, saying that “[a] patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other open source codecs Read more »
National elections are looming in the UK. This means that candidates for parliament have their ears pricked for voters’ views. What better time to ask your candidate what she thinks about Free Software? About Open Standards, or freedom in the digital age? The Digital Economy Bill? Why the UK is trailing other European countries in Read more »
Here’s what I’m getting my statistically significant other for Valentine’s Day: Proudly produced in Berlin near FSFE’s office. But don’t tell her yet – it’s a surprise 🙂
This week, Dutch journalist Brenno de Winter published a leaked draft for a new version of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF). The current version of the EIF, from 2004, has been referenced around the world as a prime example of how public administrations can make use of Open Standards and Free Software in order to Read more »
MySQL is the stumbling block for Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Negotiations between Oracle and the European Commission are stuck. FSFE offers a way out: Put an independent non-profit fiduciary in control of MySQL. This will preserve competition, while assuring Oracle that while they can’t get MySQL, no one else will either.
We work for software freedom every day, but today is the day we mark to celebrate Free Software. Over 500 teams in 90 countries are holding events, meetings and parties, for example in Vienna and Leipzig. Right ahead of this special day, FSFE’s Executive Director Christian Holz (2nd left) and I (left) yesterday got together Read more »