Free Software Foundation

Type:	NGO and Non-profit Foundation
Founded:	October 1985
Location:	Boston, Massachusetts
Key people:	Richard Stallman
Fields:	Software Freedom
Services:	GNU project, GPL, LGPL, GFDL, see below
Website:	www.fsf.org

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit corporation founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement ("free" as in "freedom"), and in particular the GNU project. The FSF is incorporated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The term non-governmental organization (NGO) is used in a variety of ways all over the world and, depending on the context in which it is used, can refer to many different types of organizations. ... A nonprofit organization (abbreviated NPO, or non-profit or not-for-profit) is an organization whose primary objective is to support an issue or matter of private interest or public concern for non-commercial purposes. ... Look up October in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... 1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Nickname: City on the Hill, Beantown, Athens of America, The Hub (of the Universe)1 Location in Massachusetts, USA Counties Suffolk County  - Mayor Thomas M. Menino (D) Area    - City  89. ... Richard Matthew Stallman (nickname RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is an acclaimed software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. ... This article is about free software as defined by the sociopolitical free software movement; for information on software distributed without charge, see freeware. ... The GNU logo, drawn by Etienne Suvasa The GNU Project was announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman. ... GPL redirects here. ... GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation. ... GNU logo (similar in appearance to a gnu) The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free content, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU project. ... Look up October in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... 1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Richard Matthew Stallman (nickname RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is an acclaimed software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Gratis versus Libre is the distinction between zero price and freedom. ... The GNU logo, drawn by Etienne Suvasa The GNU Project was announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ...

From its founding until the mid-1990s FSF's funds were mostly used to employ software developers to write free software. Since the mid-1990s there are more and more companies and individuals writing free software, so FSF's employees and volunteers mostly work on legal and structural issues for the free software movement and the free software community. This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... // The free software community is also called the open source community or the Linux community. ...

Being consistent with its goals, only free software is used on all of the FSF's computers.^[1] This article is about free software as defined by the sociopolitical free software movement; for information on software distributed without charge, see freeware. ...

Current work of FSF

The GNU Project 

The original purpose of the FSF was to promote the ideals of free software. The organization developed the GNU operating system as an example of this.

GNU Licenses 

The GNU General Public License (GPL) is the most widely used license for Free Software projects. The current version (version 2) was released in 1991 but FSF is working on version 3. FSF have also published the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).

GNU License Enforcement 

FSF has the resources and the will to enforce the GPL and other GNU licenses, but only for software for which it owns the copyrights; GPL'd software owned by others must be defended by its owners, since the FSF has no legal standing to enforce the GPL for them. FSF handles around 50 GPL violations per year and tries to bring the other party into compliance without involving the courts.

Guardian of copyrights 

FSF holds the copyrights to most GNU software and some non-GNU Free Software. They require copyright assignment papers from each contributor to GNU packages so that they can defend the software in court if a dispute arises, and so that if there is a need to change the license of a work, it can be done without having to contact all contributors that have ever worked on the software.

GNU Press 

The FSF's publishing department, responsible for "publishing affordable books on computer science using freely distributable licenses."

The Free Software Directory 

This is a listing of software packages which have been verified as free software. Each package entry contains 47 pieces of information such as the project's homepage, developers, programming language, etc. The goals are to provide a search engine for free software, and to provide a cross-reference for users to check if a package has been verified as being free software. FSF has received a small amount of funding from UNESCO for this project. It is hoped that the directory can be translated into many languages in the future.

Maintaining the Free Software Definition 

FSF maintains many of the documents that define the Free Software movement.

Spreading FUD about Microsoft 

Leaders of FSF harbor an intense hatred of Microsoft and enjoy slandering the company

Legal Education 

FSF hold seminars about legal aspects of using the GPL, and offers a consultancy service for lawyers.

Project Hosting 

FSF hosts software development projects on their Savannah website.

Campaigns 

FSF sponsors a number of campaigns against what it perceives as dangers to software freedom, including software patents, Digital Restrictions Management, and user interface copyright. Defective by Design is an FSF-initiated campaign against DRM.

Annual awards 

"Award for the Advancement of Free Software" and "Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit"

Eben Moglen, General Counsel

GNU (pronounced ) is a computer operating system - consisting of a kernel, libraries, system utilities, compilers, and end-user application software - composed entirely of free software. ... GPL redirects here. ... GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation. ... GNU logo (similar in appearance to a gnu) The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free content, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU project. ... The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ... Copyright symbol Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. ... The Free Software Directory is a project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). ... UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is a specialized agency of the United Nations established in 1945. ... This article is about free software as defined by the Free Software Foundation. ... FUD is an abbreviation for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, a sales or marketing strategy of disseminating negative but vague or inaccurate information on a competitors product. ... Microsoft is one of few companies engaging itself in the console wars Where they are up against sony, nintendo, and of course sharps new console which may cause a threat. ... GNU Savannah is a project of the Free Software Foundation, which serves as a collaborative software development management system for Free Software projects. ... Political campaign Part of the Politics series Politics Portal This box:      A political campaign is an organized effort to influence the decision making process within a group. ... Software patent does not have a universally accepted definition. ... Digital Rights Management or Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is an umbrella term for any of several arrangements which allows a vendor of content in electronic form to control the material and restrict its usage in various ways that can be specified by the vendor. ... Advocacy poster Defective by Design is an anti-digital restrictions management (DRM) initiative by the Free Software Foundation. ... The Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software is annually presented to a person who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software, through activities that accord with the spirit of free software. ... The Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit was announced in October 2005 to be an annual award granted by Free Software Foundation (FSF). ... An image of Eben Moglen taken from Eben Moglens website ([1]). Permission for this image: (emails removed to prevent SPAM) --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:32, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC) From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason To: Eben Moglen Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 21:18:20 +0000 Subject: The... An image of Eben Moglen taken from Eben Moglens website ([1]). Permission for this image: (emails removed to prevent SPAM) --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:32, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC) From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason To: Eben Moglen Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 21:18:20 +0000 Subject: The... Eben Moglen Eben Moglen is a professor of law and history of law at Columbia University, serves pro bono as General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation, and is the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. ...

Structure

Membership

On November 25, 2002 the FSF launched the FSF Associate Membership program for individuals.^{[citation needed]} In March 2005 they had over 3400 associate members.^{[citation needed]} November 25 is the 329th (in leap years the 330th) day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ...

On March 5, 2003 they launched a Corporate Patron program for commercial entities.^{[citation needed]} As of April 2004, they have 45 corporate patrons.^{[citation needed]} March 5 is the 64th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (65th in leap years). ... 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Board of Directors

Current Board of Directors

• Hal Abelson, Professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Geoffery Knauth, Senior Software Engineer at SFA, Inc.
• Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford University
• Eben Moglen, Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia University
• Henri Poole, Founder of CivicActions, a grassroots campaign technology consulting firm.
• Richard Stallman, Founder of FSF and the GNU Project, Founding President, former maintainer of various GNU software, and principal author of the GNU GPL, Versions 1 and 2
• Gerald Sussman, Professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Richard M Stallman

Hal Abelson // Harold (Hal) Abelson is the Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the MIT, and a fellow of the IEEE. He holds an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a Ph. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Geoffery S. Knauth is on the board of directors of Free Software Foundation, he is a Senior Software Engineer at SFA, Inc[1]. He contributed to the GNU Objective-C Collection library and has a degree in Economics from Harvard University. ... Note: This article title may be easily confused with Lawrence Lessing. ... The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University (or simply Stanford), is a private university located approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco and approximately 20 miles northwest of San José in an unincorporated area of Santa Clara County. ... Eben Moglen Eben Moglen is a professor of law and history of law at Columbia University, serves pro bono as General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation, and is the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. ... Columbia University is a private research university in the United States. ... Henri Poole is a political campaign technologist and founder/director of CivicActions, co-founder of the AdvoKit project, serves on the Board of the Free Software Foundation and Affero, Inc. ... Richard Matthew Stallman (nickname RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is an acclaimed software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. ... // Gerald Jay Sussman is the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... An image of Richard Matthew Stallman taken from the cover of the OReilly book Free as in Freedom by Sam Williams, published on March 1, 2002 Related images Image:Free as in Freedom. ... An image of Richard Matthew Stallman taken from the cover of the OReilly book Free as in Freedom by Sam Williams, published on March 1, 2002 Related images Image:Free as in Freedom. ...

Founding Board of Directors

• Richard Stallman
• Hal Abelson
• Robert J. Chassell, Founding Director and Founding Treasurer
• Gerald Sussman
• Len Tower Jr.

Richard Matthew Stallman (nickname RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is an acclaimed software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. ... Hal Abelson // Harold (Hal) Abelson is the Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the MIT, and a fellow of the IEEE. He holds an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a Ph. ... Robert (aka Bob) Chassell was one of the founding directors of Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985. ... // Gerald Jay Sussman is the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). ... Leonard (Len) H. Tower Jr. ...

Former members of the Board of Directors

• Robert J. Chassell
• Len Tower Jr.

Robert (aka Bob) Chassell was one of the founding directors of Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985. ... Leonard (Len) H. Tower Jr. ...

Staff and Employees

Some of the Free Software Foundation staff, both current and past, are unpaid volunteers.

At any given time, there are usually around a dozen employees. Most, but not all, work at the FSF headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. Nickname: City on the Hill, Beantown, Athens of America, The Hub (of the Universe)1 Location in Massachusetts, USA Counties Suffolk County  - Mayor Thomas M. Menino (D) Area    - City  89. ...

Notable current staff and employees

• Richard Stallman, President and founder of the Free Software Foundation. RMS is not paid by the FSF (see his Personal life).
• Peter T. Brown, Executive Director (was GPL Compliance Manager and Controller until February 2005)
• Eben Moglen, General Counsel
• Dan Ravicher, Senior Counsel

Richard Matthew Stallman (nickname RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is an acclaimed software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. ... Richard Matthew Stallman (nickname RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is an acclaimed software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. ... Peter T. Brown is the Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). ... Eben Moglen Eben Moglen is a professor of law and history of law at Columbia University, serves pro bono as General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation, and is the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. ... Dan Ravicher serves as Senior Counsel to Free Software Foundation. ...

Notable former programmers

In alphabetical order:

• Jonathan Arcenaux, GNU hacker, GNU Emacs
• Jim Blandy, GNU hacker, GNU Emacs version 19
• Jay Fenlason, GNU hacker, sed. Fenlason wrote the original version of the computer game hack as a high school student.
• Brian Fox, GNU hacker, Bash
• Tom Lord, GNU hacker, GNU arch, sed, regular expression engine, GNU Oleo features
• Roland McGrath, GNU hacker, GNU Libc, GNU Make, GNU Hurd
• Ian Murdock, GNU hacker and Debian Project founder.
• Len Tower Jr., GCC, GNU diff, who became a Founding Director. Tower was an employee of the Zimmer Foundation assigned to work with the FSF.

Rendering of a likeness of grey hat hacker Adrian Lamo in Grayscale ASCII art. ... GNU Emacs is one of the two most popular versions of Emacs (see also XEmacs). ... The correct title of this article is . ... Hack is a roguelike computer game originally written in 1982 by Jay Fenlason with the assistance of Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome, and Jon Payne. ... Brian Fox is a free software programmer. ... bash is a Unix shell written for the GNU Project. ... Tom Lord is a free software developer, best known as the author of GNU arch. ... In computing, GNU arch is a software revision control system that is part of the GNU Project and licensed under the GNU General Public License. ... The correct title of this article is . ... In computing, a regular expression (abbreviated as regexp or regex, with plural forms regexps, regexes, or regexen) is a string that describes or matches a set of strings, according to certain syntax rules. ... GNU Oleo is a lightweight spreadsheet software package. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion, because: Nonsense (test?) If you disagree with its speedy deletion, please explain why on its talk page or at Wikipedia:Speedy deletions. ... Glibc is the GNU projects C standard library. ... The correct title of this article is . ... The GNU Hurd (usually referred to as the Hurd) is a computer operating system kernel. ... Ian Murdock is the founder of the Debian project and the commercial Progeny Debian distribution. ... Debian, created by the Debian Project, is a widely used distribution of free software developed through the collaboration of volunteers from around the world. ... Leonard (Len) H. Tower Jr. ... The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of programming language compilers produced by the GNU Project. ... In computing, diff is a file comparison utility that outputs the differences between two files. ...

Notable other former staff and employees

In alphabetical order:

• Robert J. Chassell, Founding Director and Treasurer, GNU documentation hacker
• Bradley M. Kuhn, Assistant to Stallman (2000-2001), Executive Director (2001-2005)
• Prof. Masayuki Ida, Vice President for Japan (late 1990s)
• Peter Salus, Vice President (mid/late 1990s)
• Etienne Suvasa, GNU illustrator
• Melissa Weisshaus, GNU documentation hacker

Robert (aka Bob) Chassell was one of the founding directors of Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985. ... He was Chief Executive of Free Software Foundation and is now CTO of Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). ... Peter H. Salus is a linguist, computer scientist, historian of technology, author and editor of books on computing. ...

Sister organizations

In:

• 2001 - Free Software Foundation Europe was founded in Germany.
• 2003 - Free Software Foundation India was founded in Kerala.
• 2005 - Free Software Foundation Latin America was founded in Argentina.
• 2007 - Work is in progress to set up a Free Software Foundation Asia.[1]

FSF Europes logo The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSF Europe) was founded in 2001 as the official european sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to take care of all aspects of Free Software in Europe. ... The Free Software Foundation India (FSF-India), founded in 2001, is a sister organisation to Free Software Foundation. ...   (IPA: ; , Written as േകരളം in the native language Malayalam) is a state on the Western Coast of south-western India. ... Free Software Foundation Latin America (FSFLA) is the Latin American sister organisation of Free Software Foundation. ...

Recognition

• 1999: Linus Torvalds Award for Open Source Computing^[2]
• 2005: Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in the category of "Digital Communities"^[3][4]

The Prix Ars Electronica is a yearly prize in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. ...

Notes and References

Richard Matthew Stallman (nickname RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is an acclaimed software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... December 10 is the 344th day (345th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, 21 days before the next year. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... December 10 is the 344th day (345th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, 21 days before the next year. ... Ars Electronica Center in the daytime Ars Electronica Center at night The Ars Electronica Center (AEC) is a center for electronic arts run by Ars Electronica, situated in Linz, Austria, at the northern side of the Danube opposite the city hall of Linz. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... December 10 is the 344th day (345th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, 21 days before the next year. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... December 10 is the 344th day (345th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, 21 days before the next year. ...

See also

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) EFF Logo The EFF uses the blue ribbon as symbolism for their Free Speech defense. ...

External link

Free software Portal

• The Free Software Foundation web site