Matthias Kirschner
The @fsfe@mastodon.social 's President
. Working for #FreeSoftware (also known as #OpenSource), so every individual in our society can self-determined use, study, share, and improve software ➡ #SoftwareFreedom
Author of the book "Ada & #Zangemann - A tale of software, skateboards, and raspberry ice cream".
Public Money? #PublicCode ! #DeviceNeutrality #RouterFreedom #ilovefs #YH4F #REUSE #DigitalRights #TechnicalDistributionOfPower #Democracy
Congratulations to @Mastodon@mastodon.social for receiving 614,000 Euros from the German Sovereign Tech Agency. Great planned improvements for the #Fediverse and #FreeSoftware #OpenSource and good outcome of Public Money? Public Code! #PMPC https://www.heise.de/en/news/Mastodon-Funding-for-work-on-encrypted-direct-messages-and-more-11267471.html
RE: @finnmyrstad@eupolicy.social
Here a small movie by the Norwegian Consumer Council inspired by @pluralistic@mamot.fr
As many raise questions about #EuroOffice and the #AGPL license ( @nextcloud@mastodon.xyz #Ionos...) my current recommendation is to read:
* @fsf@hostux.social 's "You cannot use the #GNU (A)GPL to take #softwarefreedom away https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/agpl-is-not-a-tool-for-taking-freedom-away
* and @bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org 's "#AGPL v3§7¶4 Empowers Users to Thwart #Badgeware" https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2026/apr/16/badgeware-onlyoffice-nextcloud-affero-gpl/
“#Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”
When I read such articles I feel that you could easily do an :%s/children/humans/g an they are still accurate https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/24/meta-new-mexico-jury
As former @fdroidorg@floss.social board member I am especially happy to see that #Fdroid got a grant by #NGI Zero to build a reusable stack for reproducible builds of #FreeSoftware #OpenSource apps.
In total 44 new projects were selected, see the full list by @nlnet@social.nlnet.nl here:
https://nlnet.nl/news/2026/20260302-announce-commons-fund.html
#NHS England should not hide #publiccode behind closed doors! Instead they should enlarge efforts that public money results in #PublicCode ! https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260504-01.en.html (thanks to @Edent@mastodon.social for raising the issue).
Big thanks to @Otherland-Bookshop (a beautiful bookstore in Berlin)for organising the event with @pluralistic@mamot.fr about his German book #enshitification !
When your payment provider cancelled you and now still sends you e-mails that they want to do security scans of your systems 🤔
(Background: https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260316-01.en.html )
"I was very impressed with myself to have the head of #Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass.’" [Tim Cook] makes this calls to me, I help him out". https://www.theverge.com/tech/915638/i-was-very-impressed-with-myself-to-have-the-head-of-apple-calling-to-kiss-my-ass
If a president of the US behaves like this, it is even more important that the European Commission and other institutions, including NGOs balance the power of Apple.
It at least encourages me to continue @fsfe@mastodon.social 's work including the legal litigation against Apple in front of the European Court of Justice. https://fsfe.org/activities/apple-litigation/apple-litigation.en.html
At the @fsfe@mastodon.social we today discovered some cute guest in the flower box on our balcony 🥰
There is now an Ada fan club in Brussels 🤗 @adas_fan_club@kids.keskonfai.com Need more of those to counter all the #Zangemann out there.
Thanks to @grote@chaos.social (who many years ago started @fsfe@mastodon.social 's #FreeYourAndroid ) for this summary relevant for #FreeSoftware #OpenSource users on #Android .
Proud of my @fsfe@mastodon.social co-workers who did a great job organising our Legal and Licensing Workshop so people from all around the world involved in legal topics around #FreeSoftware #OpenSource have a safe space for knowledge exchange 👏 https://fsfe.org/activities/ln/llw.en.html
@llas@defcon.social @floriansnow@mastodon.social @anaghz@social.tchncs.de @dario@pan.rent @johas@mastodon.social
Just had the annual meeting of @phosh@social.phosh.mobi e.V. It is now already one year since the founding meeting. It is great to see the progress by the #phosh contributors. Thank you all! 👏
Motorola announced a partnership with #GrapheneOS Foundation:
https://motorolanews.com/motorola-three-new-b2b-solutions-at-mwc-2026/ (thanks @llas@defcon.social for the pointer).
Great to see that you will be able to buy a new phone with a #FreeSoftware #OpenSource #Android ROM pre-installed from such a big brand.
All the best to @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social for the next steps in this! #FreeYourAndroid
Prepare for the last day of the @fsfe@mastodon.social 's Legal and Licencing workshop with the great team.
Happy to see that the default #Firefox bookmarks pack for @fedora@fosstodon.org now includes link to "Ada & #Zangemann - A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream" https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/fedora-bookmarks/pull-request/10 (thanks to Justin for initiating this at #Devconf_cz )
Realized I am traveling with color coordinated book and laptop today. Wondering what people are thinking when they see me like this ☺️
A big thank you to everyone who supported the @fsfe@mastodon.social in our work to prevent Radio Lockdown in EU legislation.
We would not have been able to accomplish this victory without our FSFE supporters
It took a long breath, patience, the expertise to spot the right time for action, and the resources to then actually act.
With the help of our supporters we will continue to defend the right of users to install or remove any software on any of their devices!!!
When Petter discovered “Ada & #Zangemann”, he immediately felt the urge to make sure the story was available to the #Norwegian speakers. Now “Ada og Zangemann - En fortelling om programvare, rullebrett og bringebæris” has been published and was presented during the Norwegian local celebrations of #ilovefs.
Read Petter’s story and if you like what he did, join me in a round of applause for Petter 👏👏 👏 👏 https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260302-01.en.html
As a kid and teenage #Lego addict I had to get this!! The current #HumbleBundle with @nostarch@mastodon.social 's Build it with #Lego books: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/best-of-humble-build-it-with-lego-books 🥰
(Transparency: #NoStarch is the publisher of the English edition of my book "Ada & #Zangemann - A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream.)
The @fsfe@mastodon.social offers an easy way to share #FreeSoftware news within the #fediverse and other channels through the share buttons at the end of the pages. See e.g. https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260420-01.en.html
Hope that helps to make it easy for your to share important work and balance the at least to a small degree the high budgets of those no the other side of our work.
Actor Hugh Grant "The presence even if it is switched off, of a telephone or an ipad in the room it makes me twitchy [...] I'm not there. And when [...] you've gone somewhere there is no phone. You can't fix the problem. [...] is bliss. And I want my children to have that. I want my children to know what it's like to be a human being."
https://youtu.be/x_MATOD7Axs?si=WfXGQTei7wLvWlbS&t=2649
Sad how sick financial greed managed to transfer a powerful tool for users like a mobile into a burden and pain for many of them.
Hugh Grant, Jonathan Haidt and Sophie Winkleman discuss BigTech addicting our children to screens
When I hear about children who are presenting Ada & #Zangemann at their school -> 🥰 If you ever hear about that, I am very interested in getting a picture of their poster or worksheet. I love reading those!
Please today or over the weekend the nominate one or more candidates for the #European #SFSAward
With the award @fsfe@mastodon.social and #LUGBZ recognise European individuals who have made outstanding contributions to #SoftwareFreedom .
We are looking forward to receive your suggestions!
While the episode is a few months old, it was great listening to @eff@mastodon.social 's podcast with @torproject@mastodon.social 's Isabela Fernandes. It is motivating to listen to a builder, with lots of hands on experience empowering people to control technology (from Brazil in her early days to thousands of people around the world nowadays), who has such a positive attitude even when facing a huge challenges as the executive director of #TOR . Highly recommended episode! 👏 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/podcast-episode-why-three-tors-magic-number
RE: @tommi@pan.rent
Was great to have @tommi@pan.rent and others from @internetarchiveeurope@toot.community today at the @fsfe@mastodon.social 😀
Good write-up about the #OpenWRT One "A build system aimed at license compliance" based on @conservancy@social.sfconservancy.org 's @ossguy@fedi.copyleft.org 's talk https://lwn.net/Articles/1066103/
Makes me very happy to see that each year more and more people on 14 February get involved in #ilovefs . Here the report from this year: https://fsfe.org/activities/ilovefs/report/report_2026.html 🥰
Great if you receive such nice feedback about an @fsfe@mastodon.social event 🤗
“This is the one conference, which you just have to join. The one conference where everyone, everything the whole atmosphere reflects what a difference a community can make, the conference that lets us overcome the challenges we alle sometimes face [...] where history and experience count, where failure is okay, [...] all of this in one package, I couldn’t have wished for a better conference!"
I loved that the toilet was still there!! Maybe with "DoubleuIPeeEe Dash areheff root" it would have become a privacy friendly toilet 😉 (see https://man.archlinux.org/man/wipe.1 )
Would be interested if you had or will have a look at the code:
#Heise "Public Money, Public Code #PMPC: Federal government releases AI modules. With the Spark project, the BMDS is focusing on digital sovereignty: the #opensource AI tools for accelerating planning are now available on #OpenCode. https://www.heise.de/en/news/Public-Money-Public-Code-Federal-government-releases-AI-modules-11243619.html
RE: @liw@toot.liw.fi
Anyone here in the #FreeSoftware #OpenSource community who can help to proofread the Finnish translation of Ada & #Zangemann ?



