Statute of FFII

Enlightenment:

• Motivation for understanding use of data processing systems, enabling to cope with unexpected problems, guidance to set oneself free of self-encumbered informational immaturity.
• Unrestricted access to the world cultural heritage, to lexica, handbooks and teaching materials, unrestricted integration of these works in all kinds of data processing materials.
• Experiencing the joy of creating and sharing information instead of hoarding information information. Cultivation of hacker ethics as described by E.S.Raymond.

Compatibility, free access to key technologies:

Public information prevents for market monopolies. When two systems do not match together, all competitors have the access to information that is necessary to help themselves and enable exchange.

Reuse, garbage avoidance, environmental protection:

Free software does not require costly marketing via glazed packaging, picture books, use-once data media and watermark certificates. No software change requires hardware change. Used hardware can be reused for reasonable tasks eg for clustering PCs to super computers or the internet access of schools.

Fostering local language and culture:

Free information localizes informational competence. We care that important information is available for local persons in their language.

1. Organisation of talks, lectures, seminars and other public education events.
2. Generation of public information by public tender of works or buying (and liberating) existing information works.
3. Measures to protect free information against attacks by software patents. For this benefit the association may for example "patent free" technology invented by members or friends that is patent these technologies and irrevocably guarantee their usability in free information works.

The association only takes roles that companies oriented for profit cannot do according to its purpose. It popularizes, generates and protects information for the public benefit, but does not compete with distributors or internet access providers.

1. The association acts selflessly; it does not principally follow microeconomic aims.
2. The association is financed by membership contributions and donations.
3. The association's funds only may be used for goals specified in the statutes. Members do not receive payments from the association's funds.
4. The services provided by the association address the entire public. Association members do not have privileged access. Whenever services are offered for fee, members do not receive a discount.
5. No person may be inadequately advantaged or disadvantaged by payments alien to the purpose of the association or be benefitting from inadequately high remuneration.
6. All incomes and expenditures of the association are publicly documented and judgment criteria to be decided by the membership assemby according to the association's purposes are publicly document in written form.

1. The association has contributing and active members.
2. Active members have the active and passive election right in the membership assembly. They have to participate in all votings, to hand in justified positions before the voting and moreover to participate publicly (according to ability) as well as shoulder a certain responsibility area within the association. If for a good reason they violate one of these burdens then they loose voting rights and become contributing members. Normally each member decides for him/herself whether he/she fulfills these requirements. But the membership assembly also can decide on person-independent judgment criteria.
3. Contributing members do not have election right in the membership assembly. But they may put forward proposals and they are informed as well as active members on all resolutions of the associations.
4. Members of the associations can be natural persons or organisations. But the rights of an active member only can be represented by a natural person. Organisations may become active members by endowing a natural person with active membership for a continuous period of at least two years.
5. The founders are members of the association. The board decides on new membership after written application. The decision is communicated to the applicant and all members.

1. The association charges an annual membership fee. Its amount is determined by the membership assemby.
2. In case a member is late with at least two contributions, the board may decide to exclude it.
3. All voluntary contributions are owned finally and unconditionally by the association from after receipt.
4. Every member can immediately leave the association by telling its intention to the board.
5. The membership assembly can exclude members that harm the association's purpose by majority vote with a written justification. The resolution has to be communicated to all members including a position (length: at most 10 KB) of the excluded member.

1. The institutions of the associations are the membership assembly and the board.
2. The members of the board work are not salaried.

1. The board calls for a membership assemby at least once a year. The invitation has to be sent out in written form at least four weeks before the date of the membership assembly. The membership assembly's tasks include:
   • Election of the board and the financial supervisor
   • Exoneration of the board
   • Treatment of proposals and statute changes
2. Access to the membership assembly is granted to all natural members and the appointed representatives of the corporate members. The membership assembly can grant guests access and the right to talk.
3. Within a term of one month the board period may call for an extraordinary membership assembly by writing a circular mailing to all members unless within one week after delivery of the circular one third of the active members opposes in written form.
4. The board has to call for an extraordinary membership assembly if one third of the active members demands this in a proposition and specifies a cause and a reason.
5. The membership has a quorum regardless of the number of members present if it was announced properly. Unless the statutes stipulate something else, the simple majority of votes decides. A proposition is rejected in case of a tie.
6. The membership assembly only decides on propositions whose (at most 10 kb long) full text was at least was at least for one month in advance proposed to all members. All members have the right to propose propositions and to ask 1-3 active members of their choice for an extensively justified poistion. The positions are to be distributed at least two weeks in advance on the public email distribution list of the association.
7. Membership assembly resolutions and their voting results are recorded in a protocol authorized by the board and propagated to the members.

1. The board consists of one president, one secretary and a treasurer. Up to two vice-presidents and up to two assessors my be elected. They are elected for 2 years. The board is in office until the election of a new board.
2. Only active members may be elected into the board.
3. In court and out of court the association is represented by the president or by a vice-president or by two members of the board.
4. The board manages the routine tasks of the association. It manages the association's assets.

1. Resolutions of the organs of the assembly and documents norming the association's life have to be documented in written form, have to be communicated to all members at the same time and have to be archived for later access.
2. "Written form" is used as generic term for all representations that permanently conserve speech. The preferred format for board resolutions is digitally signed text. The preferred means of communication is electronic mail. Synchronization is achived via a mailing list distributor. The preferred form of archival is publicly accessibly hypertext, that should as much as possible should satisfy the requirement for information works for the public benefit.
3. The mail distributor and the hypertext archive of the association are available to every member for reading and writing participation. Every member has to ensure that he/she is reachable for other members via the email distribution list. No member can demand information in others than the above-mentioned preferred forms.
4. Active members can vote in a membership assembly without being present by submitting at least one day for the assembly a digitally signed document to an email processor in a yet to be defined syntax. The details of this procedure have to be approved by the membership assembly.

1. The statutes and the purpose of the association can be changed by the membership assembly. For this a majority of two-thirds of the valid votes is needed. Before voting the quorum has to be checked.

Small changes in the statutes that are demanded by the authorities for the public utility status may be decided on in uanimous vote.

1. The association only may be dissolved in a membership assembly with a majority of nine tenths for the valid votes.
2. Unless the membership assembly decides differently, the president and the vice president both are liquidators with power of representative.
3. In case of liquidation of the association or the loss of tax-benefitted purpose the existing assets are transferred to a legal person of public law or a to another tax-benefitted corporation with the association's mission as defined above, that is the fostering of public education by making accessible, creating and legally certifying information goods as public utilities.