Jonas Öberg (born 22 November 1977 in

Norrköping Norrköping (; ) is a city in the province of Östergötland in eastern Sweden and the seat of Norrköping Municipality, Östergötland County, about 160 km southwest of the national capital Stockholm, 40 km east of county seat Linköp ...

, Sweden) is a free and open-source software activist, describing himself as an instigator in the world of free, having worked with the

Free Software Foundation Europe The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is an ''eingetragener Verein'' (registered voluntary association) under German law. It was founded in 2001 to support all aspects of the free software movement in Europe, with registered chapters in seve ...

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborati ...

, FSCONS,

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

and the

Shuttleworth Foundation The Shuttleworth Foundation was established in January 2001 by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth as an experiment with the purpose of providing funding for people engaged in social change. While there have been various iterations of ...

. He started to develop software in 1991 and installed his first Linux operating system in 1993 after which he eventually joined as a webmaster for the

. In the late 1990s, he spent some time at the MIT AI Labs where he met with

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), 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 ...

and others from the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 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 ...

, joining them for The Bazaar conference in New York. Since 2002, he has been on the award committee for the

's Free Software Awards. In 2001, he was a founding member of the

and took up a role as vice president on 22 November 2001 when former vice president Loïc Dachary took a step back to focus on

GNU Savannah GNU Savannah is a project of the Free Software Foundation initiated by Loïc Dachary, which serves as a collaborative software development management system for free Software projects. Savannah currently offers CVS, GNU arch, Subversion, Git, M ...

Having worked with

for several years, including running a course of fundraising at the Peer to Peer University, he became the first Regional Coordinator for Europe in 2011. His work for the organisation eventually led him to a position as a Fellow of the

where his work focus on creating tools and prototypes for the embedding of metadata for licensing and attribution requirements in digital works. His company Commons Machinery was featured as one of the 12 winners of Tech All Stars 2014, a competition of the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...

's and

Neelie Kroes Neelie Kroes (; born 19 July 1941) is a retired Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and businessperson who served as European Commissioner from 22 November 2004 to 1 November 2014. Kroes studied Economics at t ...

's Digital Agenda.

Personal life

He has a 19th-century wooden house in the North of Sweden which he is continuously renovating and lives outside of

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

Gnesta Gnesta () is a bimunicipal locality and the seat of Gnesta Municipality, Södermanland County, Sweden with 5,562 inhabitants in 2010. Gnesta is located in Södermanland, on the border to Stockholm County. As situated near the county boundary Gn ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. He marrie
Julia Velkova
- a media researcher, and a member of

Internet Society The Internet Society (ISOC) is an American nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1992 with local chapters around the world. Its mission is "to promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people ...

Bulgaria. Their marriage took place at the

Ice hotel An ice hotel is a temporary hotel made up of snow and sculpted blocks of ice. Ice hotels, dependent on sub-freezing temperatures, are constructed from ice and snow and typically have to be rebuilt every year. Ice hotels exist in several countri ...

in Sweden on 8 March 2013.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oberg, Jonas Free software people Free software programmers GNU people Copyright activists Open content activists 1977 births Living people People from Norrköping