Georg C. F. Greve

Last updated

Georg C. F. Greve
GeorgCFGreve2009.jpg
2009
Born (1973-03-10) 10 March 1973 (age 50)
Helgoland, Germany
NationalityGerman
Alma mater University of Hamburg
Occupation(s)Co-Founder and President at Vereign, [1] Founding President (until 2009) and Director at FSFE

Georg C. F. Greve (born 10 March 1973 in Helgoland, Germany) is a software developer, physicist, author and currently co-founder and president at Vereign. [1] He has been working on technology politics since he founded the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) in 2001.

Contents

Greve has been working full-time as president for FSFE since early 2001. In June 2009, he handed over the presidency of the FSFE to Karsten Gerloff. [2] His responsibilities for FSFE included coordination of the general assembly, supporting local representatives in their work, working on political and legal issues as well as projects and giving speeches or informing journalists to spread knowledge about free software.

In addition, Georg Greve also worked as a consultant, representing Google in the OOXML standardisation process at ISO [ citation needed ] and as a project reviewer for the European Commission.[ citation needed ]

Greve is married and lives in Switzerland. [3]

In 2010 Greve was awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany (Verdienstkreuz am Bande). [4]

Career

Greve has a degree of physics in biophysics, with physical oceanography and astronomy as minor fields of study from the computer science department of the University of Hamburg. His interdisciplinary diploma thesis was written in the field of nanotechnology on scanning probe microscopy.

Greve's first software development was when he was 12 years old. His first publication of a program was in a professional journal in 1992. He partly financed his studies when he managed the software development to evaluate SQUID-sensor data in the biomagnetometic laboratory at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany.

In 1993 he came across free software, the GNU Project and Linux. In 1998, he was the European speaker for the GNU Project [ citation needed ] and began writing the "Brave GNU World", [5] a monthly column on free computer software featuring interesting GNU projects each month. It was published on the Internet in as many as ten languages, and in international printed magazines including the German Linux-Magazin . The name Brave GNU World is a reference to Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World .

In early 2001, he initiated the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE or FSF Europe), the first Free Software Foundation outside the United States of America and, as of 2007, the only transnational Free Software Foundation. Greve was invited as an expert to the "Commission on Intellectual Property Rights" of the UK government,[ citation needed ] and represented the coordination circle of German civil society during the first phase of the United Nations (UN) World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) as part of the German governmental delegation.[ citation needed ] He has also networked[ vague ] with civil society working groups at the European level as well as for the thematic working group on patents, copyrights, trademarks (PCT) and free software.[ citation needed ]

Between 2010 and 2017, he was CEO as well as president and, later, member of the board for Kolab Systems AG in Küsnacht, Switzerland, the developers of the Kolab server. [6] In late 2017, Greve co-founded a company called Vereign to enable authentic communication through blockchain federated networks with Claus H. Bressmer. [1] [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free software</span> Software licensed to be freely used, modified and distributed

Free software, libre software, or libreware is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.

The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets these requirements, The Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software, is termed free software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU</span> Free software collection

GNU is an extensive collection of free software, which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popularly known as Linux. Most of GNU is licensed under the GNU Project's own General Public License (GPL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tenés Empanadas Graciela</span>

Tenés Empanadas Graciela is a turn-based strategy game distributed by several popular Linux distributions. The idea for this free and open-source software program came from the board game TEG, which itself is based on the popular Risk game but differs in many aspects of the rules.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free Software Foundation Europe</span> Foundation promoting Free Software movement

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is an organization that supports free software and all aspects of the free software movement in Europe, with registered chapters in several European countries. It is a registered voluntary association incorporated under German law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FSF Free Software Awards</span>

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) grants two annual awards. Since 1998, FSF has granted the award for Advancement of Free Software and since 2005, also the Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free and open-source software</span> Software whose source code is available and which is permissively licensed

Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is available under a license that grants the right to use, modify, and distribute the software, modified or not, to everyone free of charge. The public availability of the source code is, therefore, a necessary but not sufficient condition. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term for free software and open-source software. FOSS is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright or licensing and the source code is hidden from the users.

Alternative terms for free software, such as open source, FOSS, and FLOSS, have been a controversial issue among free and open-source software users from the late 1990s onwards. These terms share almost identical licence criteria and development practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harald Welte</span> German programmer

Harald Welte, also known as LaForge, is a German programmer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Stallman</span> American free software activist and GNU Project founder (born 1953)

Richard Matthew Stallman, also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software. Software that ensures these freedoms is termed free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote all versions of the GNU General Public License.

Tivoization is the practice of designing hardware that incorporates software under the terms of a copyleft software license like the GNU General Public License, but uses hardware restrictions or digital rights management (DRM) to prevent users from running modified versions of the software on that hardware. Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) coined the term in reference to TiVo's use of GNU GPL licensed software on the TiVo brand digital video recorders (DVR), which actively block modified software by design. Stallman believes this practice denies users some of the freedom that the GNU GPL was designed to protect. The FSF refers to tivoized hardware as "proprietary tyrants".

This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.

gNewSense Linux distribution

gNewSense was a Linux distribution, active from 2006 to 2016. It was based on Debian, and developed with sponsorship from the Free Software Foundation. Its goal was user-friendliness, but with all proprietary and non-free software removed. The Free Software Foundation considered gNewSense to be composed entirely of free software.

Dap is a statistics and graphics program based on the C programming language that performs data management, analysis, and C-style graphical visualization tasks without requiring complex syntax. Its name is an acronym for Data Analysis and Presentation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free-software license</span> License allowing software modification and redistribution

A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder of a piece of software can remove these restrictions by accompanying the software with a software license which grants the recipient these rights. Software using such a license is free software as conferred by the copyright holder. Free-software licenses are applied to software in source code and also binary object-code form, as the copyright law recognizes both forms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU General Public License</span> Series of free software licenses

The GNU General Public License is a series of widely used free software licenses or copyleft that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general use and was originally written by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. These GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. It is more restrictive than the Lesser General Public License and even further distinct from the more widely used permissive software licenses BSD, MIT, and Apache.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft terms, such as with its own GNU General Public License. The FSF was incorporated in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, where it is also based.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FSCONS</span>

Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit (FSCONS) is a Nordic conference trying to bridge the gap between software and cultural freedom held each autumn in Gothenburg, Sweden. It shares many similarities with FOSDEM in the way in which the event is structured, but where the latter attracts speakers and visitors primarily interested in Free software, FSCONS aims to attract a more diverse crowd. The conference was organised 2007-2011 by FFKP, the Society for Free Culture and Software. In 2012, a new member run association was formed to take over the organisation of conference.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexandre Oliva</span>

Alexandre "Alex" Oliva, is a Brazilian free software activist, developer, former vice president of the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and founding member of Free Software Foundation Latin America (FSFLA). He is currently on-hold from his PhD studies at the Institute of Computing of the State University of Campinas, Brazil whilst working as a compiler engineer at Red Hat, contributing in the GCC compiler. He is the maintainer of Linux-libre, a fork of the Linux kernel which removes non-free software components, such as binary blobs from the kernel. The Linux-libre kernels are used in Linux distributions such as Parabola GNU/Linux-libre and Trisquel, all of which are recommended by the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LibreCMC</span> Computer operating system

LibreCMC is a Linux-libre distribution for computers with minimal resources, such as the Ben NanoNote, ath9k-based Wi-Fi routers, and other hardware with emphasis on free software. Based on OpenWrt, the project's goal is to aim for compliance with the GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines and ensure that the project continues to meet these requirements set forth by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). LibreCMC does not support ac or ax due to a lack of free chipsets.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Vereign" . Retrieved 15 March 2018.
  2. ↑ "Pressrelease: Introducing FSFE's new president, vice president and executive team". FSFE.org. 24 June 2009. Retrieved 25 March 2010.
  3. ↑ "FSFE - About - Georg C. F. Greve - Curriculum Vitae". FSFE.org. 10 January 2009. Retrieved 10 March 2009.
  4. ↑ "FSFE founder Georg Greve awarded German Cross of Merit" . Retrieved 30 April 2010.
  5. ↑ "Georg's Brave GNU World - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)". Gnu.org. 8 February 2000. Retrieved 10 March 2009.
  6. ↑ "FSFE - About - Georg C. F. Greve - Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). FSFE.org. 23 November 2010. Retrieved 13 January 2018. and "Company register of Switzerland, publication n° 03906623". shab.ch. 29 November 2017. Retrieved 13 January 2018.
  7. ↑ "Swiss Blockchain Association Fostering knowledge around blockchain". swissblockchainassociation.ch. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.