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[FYI] European Free Software Foundation created
- To: debate@fitug.de
- Subject: [FYI] European Free Software Foundation created
- From: "Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>
- Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 18:38:00 +0100
- Comment: This message comes from the debate mailing list.
- Organization: NONE
- Sender: owner-debate@fitug.de
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/001128/15/aqbih.html
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Tuesday November 28, 10:01 AM
European Free Software Foundation created
Free Software foundation gets a European base
A European "sister organisation" to the Free Software Foundation
(FSF) was announced Friday by programmers from Germany to cater for
the complexity and diversity of the international open source
community.
After receiving a blessing from the founder of the Free Software
Foundation, Richard Stallman, the assembled programmers released a
declaration of intent posted at the Foundation's new European Web
site, www.fsfeurope.org and also launched its official mailing list.
"It has become evident that the FSF in the US, being in a totally
different time and culture zone, can hardly keep in touch with the
strong developments and currents in European Free Software," says
founding member Georg Greve in a statement.
The creation of the satellite Foundation reflects the growing
importance of software released under "Free Software" licences world-
wide. This refers to software published under a licensing agreement
that allows other programmers to view, copy and modify source code so
long as it is reproduced under the same terms. The most widely known
of these is the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), under which the
GNU/Linux operating system is published.
The growing popularity of Linux, among businesses particularly,
demonstrates the success that Free Software has seen in recent years.
Linux is a variant of Unix built on a kernel created by Finnish
programmer Linus Torvalds. It can be downloaded for free over the
Internet and is built by thousands of programmers from around the
world.
According to EuroLinux, an organisation that promotes Linux and Free
Software in Europe, this development shows the importance of having
international representation.
"It is really important that Europe gets some structure for its Free
Software community," says a EuroLinux spokesman. "Lots of Free
Software developers live in Europe. Linux was of course started in
Europe."
[...]
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