All thoughts come in little pieces. Opinions mature in time like a good port wine in an oak barrel [1]. This page is about the history of Vrijschrift.org or ScriptumLibre.org which is the international branch.
Vrijschrift has arisen informal in 1998, from dissatisfaction because the philosophy of the Free Software Foundation was not carried out in The Netherlands. According to Vrijschrift, free software is more than just another business model. Without the underlying idealism there is less or even no free software (just like many contributions to Wikipedia have an idealistic origin). Vrijschrift also prefers the term free software above open source software because it concerns much more than only free accessible source code of software.
In 2001, the plan is taken to set up a mirror for Project Gutenberg. XS4ALL is enthusiastic and wants to sponsor a server (and still does that for the data traffic). More later this turns out to be a risky operation because that Dutch server would contain works with active copyrights in Europe and the Netherlands.
Tegelijkertijd groeien de zorgen over de Brusselse softwarepatentenrichtlijn en wordt er met man en macht gewerkt om de richtlijn in goede banen te leiden.
At the same time concerns about the software patent directive from Brussels grow and all things are put to work to lead the directive in the right direction.
In 2003, the foundation Vrijschrift.org is set up officially by Wiebe van der Worp. As a foundation Vrijschrift is characterized as a small but strong organisation which is politically and financially independent and having both technical as well as legal expertise.
After the software patent directive is swept from the table in 2005 by the European Parliament there is more space to develop other activities such as participation in the NEN-commission dealing with OOXML and there is attention for IPRED and ACTA.
From the very first ideas about Vrijschrift the concept of free school books play a role. An international coalition among with the Free Software Foundation Europe tries to scale up the concept internationally. The European Commission denies a funding in 2003 and many attempts afterwards in The Hague turn in to failure. In 2008, - exactly 10 years after initiatig the concept - the tide turns: a large parliamentary majority is enthusiastic about free schoolbooks and minister Plasterk introduces Wikiwijs which matches the concept with some impotant shortcomings.
[1] Wiebe likes port wine and loves to receive it. His alternate currency is in fact the Ruby (Rb) which is based on an average price level of several brands and equals approximately 10 Euro's.