Germany Stack +++ DMA+++ YH4F
December has arrived, and with it, our last newsletter of 2025. In
the last weeks, we took part in the consultation on the Germany Stack,
exchanged insights at the Article 19 2025 DMA Enforcement Symposium,
and gave REUSE a new home on Codeberg. Meanwhile, registration for the
next edition of Youth Hacking 4 Freedom is opened and we have new
Software Freedom podcast episodes to listen to.
Table of contents
Quote of the Month
“I believe that free software is a crucial part in ensuring the
stability of our democracies and that it plays an enabling role in
almost all of our modern issues; especially those, that need to be
solved politically.”,Josefine FSFE supporter
Germany Stack: Only Free Software Enables Digital Sovereignty
The “Germany Stack” is a central digital-policy project of the German
federal government. The FSFE
calls for the Stack to be planned in close
coordination with European partners and to be implemented entirely as
Free Software, since only the four freedoms enable digital
sovereignty.
The FSFE submitted a statement
to the public consultation.
DMA: The FSFE participated in the Article 19 2025 DMA Enforcement
Symposium
This annual expert conference, organized by Article 19 and a
consortium of several universities, is one of the most important venues
for
discussions on the implementation of the Digital Markets Act. It has
become a key bridge between academics and the European Commission, which
reviews and comments on the submissions.
This year, the FSFE facilitated a team of technologists and open
technology experts to contribute technical perspectives to the event.
The FSFE also participated in a study coordinated by Dr. Lucas Lasota
from the Halle Wittenberg University on software interoperability and
Google's monopoly position in the Android Open Source Project.
Fuel the next wave of tech talent with YH4F, the FSFE’s Free Software
competition
Youth Hacking 4 Freedom is the FSFE’s programming competition for
teenagers aged 14 to 18 years from across Europe. Through YH4F the FSFE
conveys the values and knowledge surrounding Free Software, provides the
chance to develop your own project idea, learn valuable skills for
project management, problem solving and of course: programming! Find out
why
it is worth for you to support us in this mission and what our
current sponsors say about YH4F.
Registration for the 2026 is now opened so spread the word!
Demands for open networks and democratic public spheres –decentralised, sovereign, and for the common good!
The FSFE supports the alliance “Open Networks and Democratic Public
Spheres: Decentralised, Sovereign, and Serving the Common Good!”, which
calls on elected representatives in Germany, France, and the EU to adopt
coherent measures that strengthen Europe as a business location and
establish public-interest digital infrastructures as the foundation of
our digital sovereignty.
On the occasion of the European Summit for Digital Sovereignty a few
weeks ago, the
alliance published four key demands: Fediverse Fund for
user-centred further development, amounting to €30 million annually;
anchoring the +1 principle in the work of the federal government and
public institutions; recognition of non-profit status in the field of
decentralised digital infrastructure, thereby establishing legal
certainty; and establishment of decentralised, interoperable and
cross-sectoral pan-European media platforms with the involvement of
civil society from the outset
Opening the cage: the FSFE flies away from X
(Twitter)
The Free Software Foundation Europe deleted its
account on X. The platform never aligned with our values and no longer
serves as a space for communication. What initially intended to be a
place for dialogue and information exchange has turned into a
centralised arena of hostility, misinformation, and profit-driven
control, far removed from the ideals of freedom we stand for.
REUSE repositories migrating to Codeberg
The REUSE helper tool has migrated from GitHub to Codeberg, and is
now located at https://codeberg.org/fsfe/reuse-tool.
Codeberg is software development platform run by a Berlin-based and
community-owned non-profit, freely and exclusively accessible for all
Free Software projects.
In three steps, REUSE software addresses a fundamental problem with
Free Software licensing at its source: what licence is a file licensed
under, and who owns the copyright? The REUSE project consists of a set
of best practices and a tool that makes it easy and simple to add this
legal information to every single file in a project.
The REUSE project is based on its community and the people who
support and adopt it! Led by the FSFE, the REUSE Initiative is seeking
sponsors
to support it.
FSFE staffers and volunteers posing on their, traditional, SFSCON team picture
SFP#41: Policy and EU: Recap of SFSCON
Do you remember that the FSFE took part in the well-known and
long-established South Tyrol Free Software Conference (SFSCON) in
Bolzano? Together with more than 1,000 participants, the FSFE explored
current topics in the Free Software ecosystem, with a special emphasis
on this year’s main theme: Ethics.
In the episode 41 of our
podcast, we look back and revisit the most important discussions
that took place during the event.
From our community: HackerTrain to FOSDEM 2026
The call for participation for the HackerTrain to FOSDEM 2026 is now
live! This is a community-led project to bring together hackers and
geeks travelling to their events (in Europe).
For FOSDEM 2026 there will not be
one HackerTrain, but several at the same time on different routes and
different dates – all converging in Brussels.
More information.
Ada & Zangemann: Italian movie is here
After the premiere of the Ada & Zangemann movie in Italian during
the community meeting at SFSCON, you can find it now in our Peertube
channel and all the information in ada.fsfe.org/movie.
To make the experience even better for Italian speakers, you can use this toolkit.
Contribute to our Newsletter
We would love to hear from you. If you have any thoughts, pictures, or news to share, please send them to us at newsletter@fsfe.org. You can
also support us, contribute to our work, and join our
community. We would like to thank our community and all the volunteers, supporters, and donors who make our work possible, with a special mention to our translators who make it possible for you to read
this newsletter in your mother tongue.
Your editor,
Ana
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