Author Archives: Georg Greve

About Georg Greve

Georg Greve is a technologist and entrepreneur. Background as a software developer and physicist. Head of product development and Chairman at Vereign AG. Founding president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). Previously president and CEO at Kolab Systems AG, a Swiss Open Source ISV. In 2009 Georg was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon by the Federal Republic of Germany for his contributions to Open Source and Open Standards.

WIPO GA: Starting off by grinding to a halt

The 2007 general assembly of the UN WIPO started off yesterday by grinding to a halt over accusations against WIPO director general Kamil Idris, who apparently changed his officially recorded birth date. The United States wants that issue discussed and … Continue reading

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So this is what hit Microsoft…

The past two months have been interesting in the Chinese sense. A primary culprit of that was Microsoft’s failed attempt to push their proprietary MS-OOXML format through ISO. But there were also talks and meetings with ministers (see [1][2]) to … Continue reading

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Submit your Free Software projects for the Trophees du Libre

Cetril, the “Centre Europeen de Transfert et de Recherche en Informatique Libre” is once again organising the Trophees du Libre, an award for Free Software projects in various categories, focussed on unknown and innovative projects. The web page is now … Continue reading

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Free Beer (as in freedom)

Recently I stumbled upon a student initiative called project21.ch who were asking for preorders on their Free Beer, as in freedom: The recipe is available online and you’re invited to modify it under a Copyleft license. You can either get … Continue reading

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Mountains+Geeks+Barbecue+Freedom=Bergtagung

FSFE Fellow Alex Antener reminded me today that some of our Swiss Team set up the Bergtagung for next weekend in the beautiful Swiss Alps mountain town Siat. The purpose of the Bergtagung is to have a meeting open minds, … Continue reading

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The Inquirer on MS-OOXML and ODF

The Inquirer has an interesting opinion piece called "Microsoft twists and turns over ODF" in which they pick up on the MS-OOXML conversion hoax: The problem is that if Robertson and Paoli’s early claim is correct would be theoretically impossible … Continue reading

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MS-OOXML conversion hoax

Microsoft has been quite busy signing up various associates such as Novell, Xandros, Linspire and Turbolinux to work on its MS-OOXML converter. This was somewhat surprising. To make myself clear: It was no surprise that Microsoft would try to enroll … Continue reading

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BBC: Questions for Microsoft on open formats

The BBC just put an article by FSFE media coordinator Joachim Jakobs and myself online in which we respond to an earlier article on a "time bomb" in the UK National Archives. What Microsoft carefully sought to avoid mentioning in … Continue reading

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Massachusetts: thumbs up for lock-in

While FSFE was busy holding its 2007 general assembly in Brussels, Belgium, the world kept spinning. In this case backwards, unfortunately. After the state of Massachusetts had become famous for its clear-sighted move towards Open Standards in general and the … Continue reading

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Six questions to national standardisation bodies

It seems that many people have been confused by Microsoft’s attempt at trying to portray MS-OOXML as an Open Standard, which includes methods such as paying bloggers to manipulate Wikipedia or trying to confuse people about competition on the basis … Continue reading

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