Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 2, 2026

FSCONS

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.

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Hackers at FSCONS 2011 source ↗

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 (Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting) 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.1 In 2012, a new member run association was formed to take over the organisation of conference.

Conference history

The event was first organised by members of the Free Software Foundation Europe, in particular its Swedish team2 and the then current intern in their Gothenburg office. It was organised the 7–8 December 2007 and attracted about 80 visitors. Some of the speakers were Jonas Öberg,3 Mats Östling,4 Lars Aronsson and Georg C. F. Greve.5

Through the years 2008-2011, the conference was organised once a year, always in October or November. In 2008, the FSFE was joined by Wikimedia Sverige6 and Creative Commons Sweden7 as co-organisers of the event.

Notable speakers over the years include Richard Stallman,8 Smári McCarthy,9 Oscar Swartz,10 Dr. Ansgar Bernardi, Christina Haralanova,11 Amelia Andersdotter, Marcin Jakubowski, Erik Zachte, Edmund Harriss, Karin Kosina, Henri Bergius, Glyn Moody,12 Erik de Bruijn, and, Alessandro Rubini, to mention a few.

In 2012 the member-run association Föreningen FSCONS was formed to take over the organisation of the conference from FFKP. The conference has continued to be held in November each year.

Nordic Free Software Award

FSFE and is presenting the winner of the yearly Nordic Free Software Award, given to the person/project that have made a contribution to the advancement of Free Software in the Nordic countries. The jury consists of member from FSFE and Föreningen fri kultur och programvara13 (Free Culture and Software) and members from the free software community.

Winners

  • 2007 : Skolelinux14
  • 2008 : Mats Östling
  • 2009 : Simon Josefsson & Daniel Stenberg
  • 2010 : Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson15
  • 2011 : Erik H. Josefsson16
  • 2012 : Otto Kekäläinen and Ole Tange17
References

References

  1. "Next step – FSCONS is now a true grassroots conference | Föreningen fri kultur och programvara". Ffkp.se. 2012-08-31. Archived from the original on 13 January 2013. Retrieved 2014-06-08.
  2. IDG.se article: http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.130680 (Swedish)
  3. FSCONS 2007 official site: http://fscons.org/2007/node/12
  4. LinuxWiki.org: http://linuxwiki.de/FSCONS2007
  5. Georg's about page at FSFE: http://fsfe.org/about/greve/
  6. Wikimedia Sverige webpage: http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:FSCONS_2008
  7. creativecommons.se
  8. FSF.org: http://www.fsf.org/events/20111112-dialogue-gothenburg
  9. Smári's homepage: http://smarimccarthy.is/events/selected.html Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
  10. Oscar's homepage: http://swartz.typepad.com/texplorer/live-talare-panelist.html
  11. Christina's homepage: http://www.ludost.org/about Archived 2011-09-03 at the Wayback Machine
  12. Open dot dot dot: https://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2010/11/tale-of-two-conferences.html
  13. "Föreningen fri kultur och programvara | Projekt inom fri kultur och programvara". Ffkp.se. Retrieved 2014-06-08.
  14. "Norwegian ComputerWorld". Archived from the original on 2011-10-01. Retrieved 2011-05-17.
  15. FSFE: http://fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20101108-01.en.html
  16. FSFE: http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20111114-01.en.html
  17. "Finnish activist, Danish hacker share Nordic Free Software Award 2012 - FSFE".
External links