FTA Partners

Hosting Partner

Free Knowledge Institute

The Free Knowledge Institute (FKI) is a non-profit organisation that fosters the free exchange of knowledge in all areas of society. Inspired by the Free Software (FS) movement, the FKI promotes freedom of use, modification and distribution of knowledge in four different but highly related fields: education, technology, culture and science.

The FKI is a spin-off, created in 2007, of ISOC.nl, the Dutch chapter of the Internet Society, to manage the expansion of the SELF Platform and other FS related activities under an independent although closely related entity.

The rest of this page lists the partners that have joined the FTA Associate Partner Network since 2009.

Founding Partners

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) is an innovative web-centric virtual organisation which has relied on the intensive use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) from the very beginning. The UOC's main goal is that every person satisfies their training needs, making their effort as profitable as possible, regardless of where they are and optimising their time. The UOC develops the Virtual Campus as a network community where limitations of space and time are overcome. It also uses an educational methodology based on the complete personalisation and guidance of the student. Students, lecturers and managers interact and cooperate in that network community to create, structure, share and disseminate knowledge.

Open University

OU is an independent institute for distance learning at university level founded in 1984, placed in The Netherlands. It addresses the wide-ranging learning needs of people during their course of life, plus the need to achieve a considerable increase of the knowledge level of the community at large.
In addition to Bachelor and Master programmes, the OU offers professional education, graduate level and in-company programmes. Annual student enrolment totals over 30.000. In 2006 the OU started offering free Internet courses through the Open Educational Resources (OpenER) project.

Associated Partners

University of Agder

University of Agder (Universitetet i Agder), previously Agder University College, has 8500 students and 900 members of faculty and staff. UiA is one of the largest institutions for higher education in Norway. The university has campuses in Kristiansand and Grimstad and until Summer of 2010 also in Arendal. It has a number of programmes in different discipline areas such as Economics and Social Sciences, Teaching, Nursing, Technology and Science, Humanities, Fine Arts and also Information Systems and Computer Engineering, ranging from bachelor elvel up to Ph.D. The university college became Norway's 7th university on September 1, 2007, after the government had granted it status as university on August 10, 2007.

SEED

Seed is a non-profit enterprise, born in 2006 by the experience and enthusiasm of young professionals in the field of education, technologies, and international cooperation.
Seed is involved in communication, education and technologies projects in the world of non profit, that is in the social field in Switzerland and Italy, and of international cooperation.

Gleducar

Gleducar is a free educational project that emerged in Argentina in 2002. It is also an important NGO (Civil Association) from Argentina in the field of education and technology.

Gleducar is an independent community composed of teachers, students and education activists linked by a common interest in collective work, cooperative knowledge building and free distribution of knowledge.

The project works around different themes, such as Open Education, Free Knowledge, Popular Education, peer education, collaborative learning and Free Technologies, and promotes the use of Free Software in schools as a pedagogical and technical system, with the objective of changing the paradigm of production, construction and dissemination of educational content.

Foundation for P2P Alternatives

Is a multi-disciplinary research network exploring peer-to-peer based practices across all fields, from economics and politics to religion and developments in civil society. The Foundation's principal activities are research, events and serving as a platform for sharing information and community.

Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux.

Rey Juan Carlos University

The Rey Juan Carlos University (Spanish: Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, URJC) is a public university located in Madrid (Spain). It was created in 1996 and has the Latin motto Non nova, sed nove ("Not new things, but in a new way"). It is the most modern of the six public universities in the Autonomous Community of Madrid, provides teaching for some 25,000 students on four different campuses. The University's commitment to teaching and research excellence and its collaboration with industry and business, combined with superb facilities and a marked international profile make the URJC a point of reference among Spain's universities as they face the challenges of the 21st century. The URJC is fully committed to undertaking academic research as is evidenced by its own initiative to offer incentives to increase scientific output. The Centre for Innovation, Technology and Knowledge Transfer (CINTTEC) has been commissioned to manage and further technological development at the University, encouraging the transfer of science and technology to industry, while the Technology Support Centre (CAT) makes its facilities available to academic teaching staff, researchers and local firms.

Libresoft offers Software Engineering scientists the possibility not only of having a closer look at the product that is being created, but also of studying in detail the whole development process and its technical, social and economic consequences. The main research topic is the quantitative measurement of libre software development patterns and characteristics in order to gain knowledge on the process, mainly by studying the different agents that participate in it, the use of the different development and development-supporting tools as well as the methods that have been followed.

ict@innovation

The ict@innovation programme builds capacities in African small and medium size ICT enterprises to make a business with Free Software. ict@innovation aims to encourage the growth of African ICT industries, particularly in Southern and East Africa, through three main actions: spreading Free Software business models for enterprises in Africa, fostering Free Software certification and supporting innovative local Free Software applications for social and economic development.
ict@innovation is a partnership of FOSSFA (Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa) and the 'Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)', Germany [until 2011: InWEnt, now part of GIZ].

Varna Free University

Varna Free University “Chernorizets Hrabar” was established in 1991. With a resolution of the 37th National Assembly from 21 July 1995 the University was given the status of a higher educational institution. VFU counts with approximately 12000 students, approximately 700 teachers and 300 employees. The Faculty of International Economics and Administration includes, beside economics and administration studies, also education in informatics. The department of Informatics provides bachelor and master degrees. The Major Curriculum covers knowledge in data structures, object-oriented programming, languages used in Web technologies, operating systems, computer networks administration, network programming, Internet communications security, wireless and information technologies for mobile phones etcetera.

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki is the largest university in Greece. The University Campus covers some 23 hectares close to the centre of Thessaloniki. It comprises 7 Faculties organised into 33 Schools, 5 faculties with only 1 school each, as well as 4 independent Schools.

Association of Greek Users and Friends of Free Software/ Open Source Software

The "Association of Greek Users and Friends of FS/OSS" is a Non Goverment Organisation / Non Profit Society, whose purpose is to promote GNU/Linux and FS/OSS (Free Software / Open Source Software). Its main target is to spread the word about the freedom of software and the choice that anybody could and should have, using computers. Since 2009, it is an Affiliate Organisation with Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and from October 2010, GreekLUG is the Master Affiliate of Linux Professional Institute (LPI) in Greece. This new cooperation with the Free Technology Academy marks our Association's third international partnership and it comes to enhance the Greek presence in the European Free Software movement. It also amplifies the chances of our members and of the wider Greek public to gain easy access to high quality educational resources regarding Free Software and Open Standards.