On Monday, the US Department of Justice approved the sale of Nortel's patent portfolio to a consortium led by Apple and Microsoft. At the same time, the DOJ and the European Commission allowed Google to buy Motorola Mobility, thus giving the search company a sizable patent portfolio.

ACTA, a multi-national treaty to enforce copyright and patents, is threatening Free Software and freedom in the information society. It endangers people's access to essential medicines. The treaty creates a culture of surveillance and suspicion, and the way in which it was negotiated is a mockery of proper democratic process.

"Let's be honest: In the Free Software community, we exchange a lot of criticism. We write bug reports, tell others how they can improve the software, ask them for new features, and generally are not shy about criticising others. Sometimes we forget to say "thank you, for all your work". As in the last years, we want to change this, at least for one day. So on Tuesday the 14th of February we will celebrate the "I love Free Software" - Day , says Matthias Kirschner, FSFE's #ilovefs campaign manager.

Free Software Foundation Europe has been awarded a grant from Mozilla. As announced during this weekend's FOSDEM conference in Brussels, FSFE will receive EUR 25,000 to support its work for freedom in the information society.

During the whole of February 2012, FSFE's Fellows will be able to elect their representative in FSFE's General Assembly. The winner of the election will help FSFE's strategic decision making body plan the future of the organisation, and will join Hugo Roy who occupies the other Fellowship seat since 2011. Both Fellowship representatives are full members of the General Assembly for a term of two years, and have all the rights and obligations of other members.