MP Explore +++ CRA questionnaire +++ DMA news
In July we continued working to make the EC aware of the gatekeepers'
“excuses” to avoid compliance with the DMA and we are gathering your
feedback about the Cyber Resilience Act. We have also developed a Free
Software tool to help us reaching out to representatives in Parliaments
across Europe. And more: SFP, FOSDEM...

Table of contents
Quote of the Month
“It was great spending the weekend at the Software Freedom Flat
with the System Hackers! We came together to work on the FSFE's
infrastructure, solve tech challenges, share laughs and tech
discussions with the volunteers. Of course, we also made sure that the
wonderful people working on policy and law to fight for software
freedom could do so."
Tobias Diekershoff, FSFE System
Hackers coordinator -
Help the FSFE to connect with representatives
Developed by the Free Software Foundation Europe, MP Explore is a
Free Software tool to help us reaching out to representatives in
Parliaments across Europe. We
need your help! Contribute by adding your
local, regional, and national parliament!
MP Explore is a tool designed to retrieve official and publicly available up-to-date contact information about Members of Parliament (MPs). This information, alongside other capabilities such as filtering, is important to effectively reach representatives. MP Explore allows the user to obtain this data from any number of sources, therefore becoming an effective tool to obtain such information about political representatives.
CRA: Free Software stewards, maintainers and manufacturers, share your
input!
To assess how the EU Cyber Resilience Act may impact the Free
Software ecosystem, the “Dialogue on Cybersecurity” project, of which
the FSFE is part, have
developed a questionnaire. Its aim is to develop
proposals for guidance.
DMA: Google non-compliance with the DMA, and our Interoperability
Survey
The FSFE, with a coalition of civil-society organisations, prompted the European Commission to open proceedings under the DMA to investigate Alphabet's (the parent holding company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries) behaviour regarding the uninstallation of pre-installed apps in Android. Alphabet is arguing that they are complying with the law by allowing the end-user to disable these apps. We disagree; uninstalling an application means its complete removal from the operating system, not its disabling.
Read
our joint complaint regarding Alphabet’s compliance with Art 6(3)
and 13(4) of the DMA.
If you are a Free Software developer who has requested or plans to request
interoperability with the gatekeepers' services, remember to fill in our
Digital Markets Act Interoperability Survey. The FSFE is gathering
first-hand experiences to collect crucial input from Free Software developers
who have tried, or plan to try, to request interoperability from
companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon under Article 6(7)
of the DMA. We want to monitor how gatekeepers are handling the
interoperability requests submitted by Free Software developers. We want
to hear the developers’ experiences and to make sure their voices are
heard when gatekeepers fall short of their obligations.
SFP#36: Policy and EU: Call on the Commission to implement the AI
Act
In August 2025 the first part of the European Artificial Intelligence
Act enters into force. For our 36th episode of the Software Freedom
Podcast, Bonnie and Alex break down the current discussion about it and
shed light on the arguments.
Moreover, thanks to one volunteer the Software Freedom Podcast now has transcripts, social interact, and more tags coming.
FOSDEM: give us your input for the Legal & Policy Devroom
We’re already planning the Legal & Policy Devroom for FOSDEM 2026
and want your input! What did you enjoy in 2025 (see the schedule)? What
could be improved, and which topics should we feature if our devroom is
accepted again? Share your feedback at contact@fsfe.org or on the
Fediverse and contribute to shape next year’s program!

The annual FSFE System Hackers meeting took place in Berlin. During
the weekend, the participants work on some maintenance tasks oon the
network infraestrcture as well as removing some services, such as jitsi
or discourse, and improving others, such as the ,onitoring of our
systems
YH4F: Time for reviewing the 2025 projects!
After six months of dedicated programming, the YH4F jury is now set
to evaluate the submitted projects. The jury consists of Free Software professionals from diverse backgrounds, who will review the projects over the coming weeks based on originality, creativity, and code quality. In the first voting round, the jury will select 12 projects that are placed on a shortlist and thus eligible for one of the cash prizes. During the following weeks these young developers will be invited to an online interview in which they have the chance to present their work and answer questions before the final prize decisions are made.
The winners will be announced at the YH4F Awards ceremony in mid-October in Brussels, where they will enjoy an all-expenses-paid weekend. Six participants will receive cash prizes ranging from €1,024 to €4,096.
Summer events!
Summer is also a nice time to visit conferences and attending events. While we are busy in Berlin with End of 10 events, in which we help users to install Linux on their devices, we will be also attending FrOSCon (Sankt Agustin, Germany) with a booth and several talks. Moreover, we will travel to Italy to the Scambi Festival 2025 to present FSFE's work and involvement in the Next Generation Internet initiative.
Find out about all our events at our event page!
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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