Free Software Foundation Europe

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit and (in some countries) charitable non-governmental organization dedicated to Free Software as in freedom.

Access to software determines who may participate in a digital society. Therefore, the freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software — as described in the Free Software definition — allow equal participation in the information age.

The vision of Free Software is one of a stable basis for freedom in a digital world — both in an economic and socio-ethical context. Free Software is one important cornerstone for freedom, democracy, human rights and development in a digital society.

The FSFE is dedicated to supporting all aspects of Free Software in Europe. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE.

For these reasons, FSFE was founded in 2001 as the European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in Boston, MA, USA. Both are financially, legally and personally independent from each other as parts of the international Free Software Foundation network.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.”

Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which “all rights reserved” (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation — once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally — have become endangered species.

Creative Commons is working to revive them. We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare “some rights reserved.”

Wikimedia Sverige

Wikimedia Sverige is a non-profit association based in Sweden, independent of political parties and religious affiliations. The association shall work towards making knowledge freely accessible to all humans, especially by supporting the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. The association shall also work to spread knowledge about the these projects, promote their use, and support technology essential for them.