For more than 20 years Feilner IT has been helping IT experts, management, public administration and politicians with expert knowledge on the internet, IT, Free and Open Source Software and Open Standards.
Our large network of pundits will help you to help yourself, by explaining, writing, teaching, consulting, coaching, research, publishing and much more – of course digitally sovereign, sustainable and with free, modern methods and tools.
Feel free to contact us – our list of references and partners is long. Check out our offers or scroll down to have a look at the highlights of our last years’ work. And if you are an NGO or social initiative, don’t hesitate to ask for special offers – we love to help.
Recent Highlights
Replace your Atlassian products. It’s about time to go legal, trustworthy, flexible and compliant with open source software: Feilner IT customer HalloWelt!, maker of Bluespice Enterprise Wiki teams up with EasySoftware, maker of EasyRedmine Knowledge Base 2.0 to provide the perfect OSS Confluence/Jira replacement. Here’s the news in a blogpost that Feilner IT wrote.
When doing some reserch on the topic of smart cities, we found these interesting guides: National Geographics has a scientific definition, Oracle has the technocrat’s view, a political one comes from the European Commission and they also wrote this piece on the OECD policy paper on Smart Cities and Inclusive Growth.
If you are fluent in English and German, you may want to compare the two wikipedias. The US / English appproach is significally different from the European / German smart city definition. Europe has more focus on inclusion and social matters, whereas the US focuses on technology.
Since December 2022, Feilner IT is proud to welcome Auctores among our customers. The market leader and manufacturer of Visavid – the video conferencing software used in all Bavarian schools – is happy to have Markus Feilner help with open source strategy consulting.
As a member of Binary Kitchen, Markus Feilner is helping in Regensburg’s Smart City “Beirat“. This committee of experts is intended to help Regensburg create an intelligent and environmentally efficient future for its citizens, focused on digitization, mobility, energy, sustainability und much more.
For the blog of Vienna groupware vendor grommunio, Markus Feilner wrote a review of all the things that happened in 2022 – an eventful year full of success, from many articles in the media to several major releases and partnerships with T-Systems and the LPI’s Upgrade to Linux initiative – a project that Feilner IT is supporting, too.
For vulnerability management expert Greenbone, Feilner IT wrote about the warning inside the recent ENISA study that declares the public sector most at risk: Hackers have advanced their skills and you should keep your security measures updated. Another article on the same blog shows how GDPR compliant Vulnerability Management” can help companies to protect themselves.
Together with Richard Heigl, (CEO of HalloWelt, the makers of BlueSpice Media Wiki), Markus Feilner wrote six articles on professional knowledge bases in enterprise environments. Learn how to structure a knowledge base, how they are constituted, how to harmonize content, build categories, set access permissions and why usability and user acceptance matter.
As one of the first supporters, Feilner IT is helping the upgradetolinux project. Together with partners like the Linux Professional Institut (LPI) and many others, this project is boosting Linux usage everywhere. The U2L project was started in the aftermath of the incompatibilities that Microsoft Windows 11 brings to the market.
2022
Feilner IT’s concept of Agile Recursive Documentation has made it into a title track of German Linux Magazine. Indeed, we’re proud to have helped shape the title and are thankful for this opportunity. Here’s our article on ARD methods and best practice in enterprise knowledge management. Thanks to HalloWelt!’s Richard Heigl for the scientific parts about knowledge base strategies.
On November 30, 2022 the first stable version of ownCloud Infinite Scale was published, and instantaneously many journals and websites picked up the news and wrote about the huge changes and advantages the new version brings. Markus Feilner is keeping track of that for ownCloud.
Since October 2022, Feilner IT is a member of the Open Data Institute. The ODI was founded in 2012 by Tim Berners-Lee and others and is a non-profit “with a mission to work with companies and governments to build an open, trustworthy ecosystem”.
Meet you at ODI summit?
Big news ahead from Feilner-IT: With – and thanks to – great partners, we are working on new offers: How to establish Open Source Program Offices (OSPO), Data Strategies and Data Institutes. Public administration can benefit from transparent oParl portals, open source time tracking (TVöD), E-Akte and X-Rechnung for Soon to come: Open Source Health Care. Stay tuned!
Our friends from Hallo Welt! have released a new version of their “enterprise wikipedia software distribution”, BlueSpice. This is another major step, because BlueSpice 4.2.1 is compatible with Long Time Support version 1.35 of Mediawiki. Feilner IT is helping HalloWelt! with text, strategy and words.
Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Thessaloniki: Throughout September and October Feilner IT has been on tour through the Balkans, as a work-and-travel event. Part II of the “halbattical” is coming spring next year.
After several years of writing for ownCloud and promoting and organizing articles and creating content for the most secure file sharing platform, Markus Feilner accepted an offer from ownCloud as Product Marketing Manager for Infinite Scale, the newest, Go-Driven cloud native product of ownCloud.
For grommunio, the open source drop-in replacement for Microsoft Exchange, Feilner IT has been writing news and blog posts. Read about how the SEC punishes Banks for using WhatsApp, how Microsoft pushes its customers in the cloud and how security holes affect MS customers.
ViPNet, Protelion, Zero Day Exploits in Windows and Docker Container for the Greenbone Community Edition: Markus Feilner has been writing several blog posts and news articles highlighting Greenbone’s vulnerability management.
For the December edition of the German Linux-Magazin, Richard Heigl from Hallo Welt! and Markus Feilner wrote an article on practical knowledge management in the modern enterprise. How to get started, how to find out what to document: Feilner IT’s concept of Agile Recursive Documentation can help.
SUSE, creator of the term “Enterprise Linux” has celebrated its 30th anniversary. Markus Feilner wrote an article in Linux-Magazin Germany on that.
“Practicing Sovereignty” is the title of the Weizenbaum conference 2022. The Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society is organizing this conference and Markus Feilner was invited.
Dors/Cluc, the “oldest Linux and free software conference in Europe” has invited Markus Feilner to speak on open source and rocket science. Watch him on Friday, May 20th, 14:45 CEST in Zagreb, Croatia.
An article on Bluespice Mediawiki – the enterprise distribution of the software that runs Wikipedia will be published in the US American Linux-Magazine beginning of June. Feilner IT helped Hallo Welt!, the Regensburg vendor of Bluespice with that.
Once more Markus Feilner was invited to Ghost Town Radio, a Regensburg “Pirate” radio station. Only available in the internets, GTR can only be listend LIVE. Talk radio, old school. On May 10th, Norbert interviewed Markus on his Ukraine trip and the war situation.
Another series of publications about migrating from Microsoft Exchange to open source with grommunio written or helped by Feilner IT include IT-Administrator (5/22, german), Admin-Magazine (issue 69) and several articles in Linux-Magazin Germany. Find them on grommunio’s website.
mailbox.org now has a new and fancy knowledge base with a modern, structured and consistent documentation for the world’s best secure webmailer. Markus Feilner has been helping Heinlein Support and mailbox.org with creating a style guide since early 2021.
Owncloud has released its newest product beta: Owncloud Infinite Scale (OCIS). A complete rewrite in Go, Feilner IT has helped with many blogposts, articles and reviews, from Raspberry Pi Geek to Heise, Linux-Magazin and a few forthcoming Go-articles on and around the OCIS Beta
For the market leader of Open Source vulnerability management, Greenbone, Markus Feilner has been contributing several blogposts including research on predictive vulnerability managemen with AI security standards, compliance, supply chain security and ransomware as a service.
In April, Markus Feilner set out to help Ukraine in Putin’s war. Thanks to the awarded Regensburg NGO Space-Eye we were able to bring 5 tons of goods (bedding and routers!) for the university of Lviv to Poland. Here’s the photo story.
Since November 2021, Feilner IT has been helping the AKDB with lots of Open Source related topics, in workshops, trainings and strategy. In May, the AKDB published a very comprehensive guide on OSS in public administration.
Early in March, Markus Feilner helped both the Open Source Business Alliance and Vogel IT with writing a piece for Cloud Computing Insider. The entry describing the OSB Alliance in their glossary needed an update.
Early this year, the Bavarian Digitalministerium published a password checker website (background). A few days later the Bavarian Radio Station BR24 asked Markus Feilner to explain why this is not a good idea at all. Here’s the article published in their “Netzwelt”.
On February 9, 2022 Feilner IT will help Regensburg’s social initiatives, namely KISS Selbsthilfe (self helping group) in the city and county of Regensburg with a Workshop on digital sovereignty and IT security in every day life.
Linux-Magazin 02/2022 has a long article from Markus Feilner on the open source groupware grommunio that claims to be a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Exchange
Feilner IT is proud to help the Regensburg NGO “Parkhaus Kollektiv” to create a modern urban social space in Ostpark, Regensburg. Since December 2021 Feilner IT is one of 17 founding members of the e.V. Parkhaus Kollektiv is a Ribisl project.
2021
For the Austrian vendor of open source collaboration software grommunio, Feilner IT contributed a review of the year 2021. Founded in late 2020, this first year of grommunio was an amazing ride. Read more …
Markus Feilner’s famous OpenVPN Training is still being booked, and starting from 2022, Feilner IT is proud to be allowed to offer it also in Heinlein Akademie, Berlin.
Feilner IT welcomes the Anstalt für Kommunale Datenverarbeitung in Bayern (AKDB) as a new member of the Open Source Business Alliance. As reported by the magazine “Egovernment Computing”, the provider for public services’ software wants to be a role model in OSS.
Still in December, an article on ownCloud Infinite Scale OCIS (written in GO Microservices) on a Raspberry was published in Raspberry Pi Geek – the German magazine for RPI fans. Martin Loschwitz and Markus Feilner helped with this.
Germany’s renowned public services magazine “Behördenspiegel” quotes Markus Feilner in its december issue (PDF): Digital sovereignty should not mean trading old monopolies for new ones, we should delegate know-how, deciscions instead of top-down-rulings. Behördenspiegel is hosting Digitaler Staat Online.
Feilner IT, namely open source journalist Markus Feilner was guest at a panel from Digitaler Staat Online on digitalisationg, together with Anika Krellmann (KGSt), Guido Gehrt (Behörden Spiegel), Christian Neßlinger (Stadt Meinigen), Christan Nähle (Do-FOSS) und Dr. Christian Knebel (publicplan GmbH)
Feilner IT helped the team of Regensburg-Kalender deliver a calendar for the city and its citizens, inclusive, for everyone and without any commercial interest. Located under the roof of the awarded blog regensburg-digital the calendar targets social, ecological and cultural initiatives and venues.
Feilner-IT has been helping the city of Treuchtlingen with evolving their strategy on digitalisation. During 2020, we helped to pin down a “Digitalisierungsplan“, an agenda an measure for future decisions. In November, the city council agreed to this plan.
More than 10 years ago, some open source nerds, company leaders and senior IT experts founded Germany’s largest NGO for open source and digital souvereignty: The Open Source Business Alliance. Feilner IT congratulates, Markus Feilner wrote the Festschrift.
Just before DeeAnn Little left Feilner IT, heading for her new role as community manager at Greenbone Networks, she wrote an article about the new hardware that the city of Treuchtlingen ordered. The small ASUS PN51 is awesome, especially for Linux desktops, serving up to 4 screens with a fast Ryzen 5 CPU.
In October Massengeschmack.tv, a web TV host with >100.000 paying customers, invited Markus Feilner as expert in digitalisation for a 90 minute interview in their “veto!” episode 60.
Not quite 2020, but 2021 and in Regensburg, and SOLD OUT! This weekend, October 02 and 03, the conference part of Minidebconf 2021 Regensburg, the leading developer conference of the great Debian community will take place. There’s so much more about it, even on Thursday and Friday but Feilner It helped organize it. Update: Here are the videos, including Markus’ “My Life with Luca“, “Security theater” and many more.
Tuesday, September 26), at Owncloud conference Markus Feilner had the honor of hosting a panel on Open Source and enterprise, with Cornelius Schumacher of KDE/DB Systel and the CERN Head of Storage, Alberto Pace. Video will be published.
Markus Feilner was interviewed by Ghost Town Radio Regensburg:
“GTR has a very special story, and Adam, its mastermind has such great positive energy. This is analog radio via the web. No recordings, just live. On September 14, my university friend Norbert visited me and we did an interview about my crazy life.”
Once again Markus Feilner was permitted to give his classic OpenVPN training at Linux Hotel, Essen. Also this time, “for cops and public servants”, great participants and a wonderful venue made it a great event. Thanks to all that make this possible!
Admin, the US network and security magazine translated and published Markus Feilner’s article on Metasploit, the standard tacking tool for red teams.
Markus Feilner has published the first ever written article on a very promising open-source groupware solution: grommunio, formerly grammm, is heading to be or become a “drop-in replacement” for market leader Microsoft Exchange. But of course in Open Source and with tons of features, including Mattermost (Chat), Jitsi (Video) and Owncloud (Files).
For Linux-Magazin 10/21, Markus Feilner has written an in-depth introduction to Metasploit, the number one Hacking tool around. On nine pages (!) he was allowed to show how to take over Windows machines through executables hidden in PDFs or worse… Here’s the full article…
Web Key Directory is an amazing technology that promises to make encryption with PGP, GPG and E-Mail much easier. No more searching for the right key, no more wrong keys being user. Here’s an article by Markus Feilner for german magazine IX 10/21 about WKD.
In his final article for Telepolis on the #Lucaapp scandal (a german startup’s endeavour to create a contact tracing app that triggered hundreds of flaws, failures and security holes), Markus Feilner wrote about strange things happening during the tender (Update: Article has been censored by publisher, full version on web.archive.org, prior articles here: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]).
Owncloud now supports Windows Virtual File systems, and Opensource.com, Redhat’s opensource blog/journalism portal published another article from our friend Martin Loschwitz on this topic. Markus Feilner is proud to have helped with that.
Another American magazine, ADMIN chose to publish one of the series of articles Martin Loschwitz and Markus Feilner wrote about Owncloud OCIS, the new, Go-based version of the former PHP software for enterprise file sharing, collaboration and sync.
As of July, 1st, Feilner IT is very proud to be allowed to help the Bavarian city of Treuchtlingen in their quest for digitalisation. For 20 years, Treuchtlingen has been a lighthouse of Open Source and usability, showing that security, digital sovereignty and service quality go together in public administrations.
The state-run Norwegian consumer protection and information instituion Forbrukerrådet has startet an open letter against advertising business models aimed at spying on customers and visitors. Their “call to action against surveillance-based advertisting” goes out to many EU institutions, asking to ban such models. Feilner IT has signed this letter.
Markus Feilner’s old home, Linux-Magazine Germany (where he served many years as deputy editor-in-chief), printed an article almost 8 pages long about Free and Open Source Software in the complex German public administration’s IT landscape. Read it now, in issue 8/21, pages 36 to 44 (publicly available after 7-8-21).
The German IT think tank “Stiftung Neue Verantwortung” (Foundation New Responsability) has published an open letter signed by prominent experts, scientists and NGOs that strongly critize the German Ministry of Interior Affairs’ recent strategy paper for cybersecurity. Feilner IT of course was one of the first signers.
Once more, Markus Feilner wrote an article for Heise Telepolis. This one (also in German) describes the ALT-Right background of Clearview AI, the company that illegally scraped photos from websites and social networks and is using them to create biometric profiles – despite EU laws and GDPR.
DeeAnn Little of Feilner IT has published her first article for a German Tech journal. On almost 8 pages in Linux-Magazin 06/21, under the title “Heavy Metal” she describes how to extend the life of an old Chromebook with the help of some tweezers, tin foil and Gallium OS. Markus Feilner helped with translating.
Another article in Heise Telepolis by Markus Feilner. This one discusses recent IT laws that had been pushed through the German parliament in the last weeks. The German government coalition is coming to an end soon, but there was still some homework from the EU left undone. Thus, at the end of its term, the coalition had to rush through some laws. Sadly, with an expectable result.
Digitally Sovereign Websites: Feilner IT has helped the renowned Open Source Business Alliance to make its website more than just GDPR-compliant, but also digitally sovereign. Together we could take the necessary tests and steps to remove the cookie banner.
The renowned and awarded blog Regensburg Digital has interviewed Markus Feilner as expert in the matter of the Luca.App. Money Quote: “Die PR-Strategie von neXenio und Culture4life ähnelt der von Donald Trump: Schneller fragwürdige Aussagen veröffentlichen als der (politische) Gegner diese entkräften kann. In der Zwischenzeit macht man viel Geld.” Update: RD has published a second article about Luca.
Markus Feilner helped Scientists for Future (S4F) writing Climate-friendly Energy Supply for Germany – 16 Points of Orientation (in German). S4F is an independent collective of scientists, researchers and academics from a multitude of disciplines, providing facts on the issues of global change, climate and sustainability for society and politics.
Continuing the story with the Luca App for contact tracing in Germany for Telepolis, Markus Feilner interviews the CEO of the Luca App, who weighs in on on the debate about the use of his company, discussions with experts and the relationship to the Corona warning app. (German) Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
The introduction of the Luca App for contact tracing in Germany has seen harsh criticism. Failures were made in licensing, security, integration with the human factor within an already-stressed contact tracing program, public relations controversies and much more. Markus Feilner takes a deep look at Telepolis: (German) Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
As of March 1, 2021, Markus Feilner has joined the team of mailbox.org and Heinlein Support to help with documentation, technical writing and internet politics. Here’s his first blogpost about how German security politicians without any clue or care try to sabotage basic human rights and damage our economy.
Even after Markus Feilner left Heise in March 2021, he still keeps on writing regularly for Germany’s biggest IT publishing house. As an example, here’s the link to his political investigations, insights and explanations: All Telepolis articles by Markus Feilner (German)
Markus Feilner helped create, edit and wrote some of the almost 20 pages in iX 2/21 that orbit around knowledge management in the 21st century. You may have noticed the shitstorm that Atlassian (Confluence) received when they announced their future Cloud-Only strategy. This magazine (in German only) has all you need to know. Alternatives, Strategies and Backgrounds.
Open Source rocks, and Markus Feilner has been using and supporting KDE, the leading OSS Desktop environment since its first version 1.0.0. Early in January, he was happy to be guest of the KDE-PIM developer meeting in virtual Osnabrück. Great work, folks!
2020
In 2020, Feilner IT was consulting GAF, “one of the leading companies in the geo-spatial service market.” . Tasks include designing process and information structures and developing enterprise-grade documentation concepts. GAF is a leader in satellite image processing and “a one-stop shop for geo-information”.
Markus Feilner was allowed to help wording a paper from Scientists for Future. The document (PDF, German) has been published here and it demands the installation of so-called representative climate citizens assemblies. It carries the title “Scientists for Future empfiehlt eine repräsentative Klima-Bürger:innenversammlung im Jahr 2021 (Version 1.0)”, version 1 was published on Dec. 11. 2020.
Feilner IT is proud to be a contributor in organizing Minidebconf Regensburg 2020, even if it didn’t happen in 2020 :-). Even though we’d been working on it since early last year, the event will have to be postponed to 2021. We will announce the exact dates soon. Feilner IT is happy to help and discuss, if you like that too, get engaged on #debconf-germany on IRC!
The German association of internet companies Eco has invited Markus Feilner to be a part of the jury for this year’s award. And Markus will do the laudatio for the winner in the realm of security. Join the cermony on Thursday, Nov. 26, 2020 – it’s Eco’s 25th anniversary!
The German state of Baden-Württemberg, precisely its Department of the Interior is looking for Open Source people and companies to develop a CO2 compensation app. And they are doing it the right way, in a comprehensive and well-considerd tender. Feilner IT is proud to have helped a very tiny bit in the creation of the tender. (in German, November 2020)
For Heise iX 12/20 (German), Markus Feilner wrote the editorial (Von Dementis und Demenz) and two articles for the title track on digital sovereignty: “Jetzt oder nie” (Digitale Selbstbestimmung) and on GAIA-X (“Gaia Europeana“, German, November 2020)
For days after the election 2020, rural Nevada has been letting us wait for a few hundred votes. On Telepolis, a popular (German) blog, Markus Feilner explains what Hanlon’s razor is about and why it may or may not be applicable to the “Silver state” (German, November 2020).
“Open Culture meets VR” is a project and award of the MFG of Baden-Württemberg. Markus Feilner helped in the jury, with laudatio and keynote (German, November 2020)
Markus Feilner has contributed to a study published by OSB Alliance Verein für Digitale Souveränität on “Digital Sovereignty in public administrations” (German, Autumn 2020)
Feilner IT helped publish an analysis and market review of open-source alternatives to Atlassian’s Confluence Wiki-style software. In this article on opensource.com author Martin Loschwitz compares Blue Spice, Xwiki and Twiki. (English, August 2020)
Feilner IT helped create a study for the city of Freiburg on options for migrating their groupware while keeping all other software solutions supported. (German, June 2020)
Markus Feilner was invited to speak at the University of Hof. On March 5, 2020, the IT Forum Hof celebrated 10 years of bringing together IT and industry, as “IT as business enabler”. And not only that, the institute of information systems also turned 10.
Find more references and older projects on our history page.