On 8. October the Berlin Fellowship group had their monthly meeting in the Newthinking Store. Beside planning our attendance on the BLIT in Potsdam and the evaluation of the past events like Software Freedom Day and "GNUburtstag" we had a visitor from AK-Vorrat.

Sean Daly's been all around Brussels, Luxembourg, Geneva, and Barcelona getting scoops and recording events about anti-trust, OOXML, and GPLv3. It's quite a niche for a volunteer in the free software movement, so our first FSFE Fellowship interview, we ask him why and how he got into this.

"...Please consider how you can contribute to our movement. You can visit http://fsfeurope.org/contribute for suggestions of ways to get involved...
1. FTF workshop leads to broad agreement on European licensing infrastructure
2. Lack of quality in standardisation a serious problem
3. Licensing as a strategic imperative, speech at FISL
4. Fellowship Group at Ubuntu Release Party in Berlin

Sometimes a consortium can play a smaller supportive role that is really powerful. Helping people and organizations to pull together in the same direction can accomplish amazing things. It’s very gratifying.

"Yesterday we had a local Fellowship meeting at the Newthinking Store in Berlin. It was a very nice meeting. In the beginning Fellow Robert Schuster gave a presentation about relevance of OpenMoko for the Free Software community..."

"FSFE's activities have been varied over the last month. It's promising to see the increase of Fellowship activities across Europe. We are looking forward to seeing more local groups appear and to hearing about their activities on all levels. One of the most important parts of supporting Free Software is sharing knowledge in your own community.

"...My vision of the world is different. I would like to see a world in which all the software in our computers — in our desktop PCs, our laptops, our handhelds, our phones — is under the our control and respects our freedom. In other words, a world where all software is free software..."

It seems we mostly hear the term "Open Source" bandied about in the press. Save for the occasional references to the Free Software Foundation and FSF Europe, one might get the impression that the Free Software movement is floundering along, all but forgotten in the annals of history. In reality, though, the Free Software movement is very much alive and kicking.

"...From September 17th to 21st 2008 the European Social Forum (ESF) is being held in Malmö, in the south of Sweden. The forum is by far the biggest meeting place for social movements and a progressive civil society in Europe - with the aim to create a better Europe and a better world. More than 20 000 people are expected to participate in Malmö.