The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organization supports the free software movement, with its preference for software being distributed under copyleft ("share alike") terms, such as with its own GNU General Public License. The FSF was incorporated in Boston where it is also based.
From its founding until the mid-1990s, FSF's funds were mostly used to employ software developers to write free software for the GNU Project and its employees and volunteers have mostly worked on legal and structural issues for the free software movement and the free software community. Consistent with its goals, the FSF aims to use only free software on its own computers.
The FSF holds the copyrights on many pieces of the GNU system, such as GNU Compiler Collection. As the holder of these copyrights, it has authority to enforce the copyleft requirements of the GNU General Public License (GPL) when copyright infringement occurs. The FSF is also the steward of several free software licenses, meaning it publishes them and has the ability to make revisions as needed.
History The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985 as a non-profit corporation supporting free software development. It continued existing GNU projects, such as the sale of manuals and tapes, and employed developers of the free software system. Since then, it has continued these activities, as well as advocating for the free software movement. From 1991 until 2001, General Public License (GPL) enforcement was done informally, usually by Stallman himself, often with assistance from FSF's lawyer, Eben Moglen. Typically, GPL violations during this time were cleared up without much publicity. In late 2001, Bradley M. Kuhn (then executive director), with the assistance of Moglen, David Turner, and Peter T. Brown, formalized these efforts into FSF's GPL Compliance Labs. In the interest of promoting copyleft assertiveness by software companies to the level that the FSF was already doing, supporters like Harald Welte launched gpl-violations.org in 2004.
From 2002 to 2004, high-profile GPL enforcement cases, such as those against Linksys and OpenTV, became frequent. Hosted on the Wayback Machine. GPL enforcement and educational campaigns on GPL compliance was a major focus of the FSF's efforts during this period. In March 2003, SCO filed suit against IBM alleging that IBM's contributions to various free software, including FSF's GNU, violated SCO's rights. While FSF was never a party to the lawsuit, FSF was subpoenaed on November 5, 2003. During 2003 and 2004, FSF put substantial advocacy effort into responding to the lawsuit and quelling its negative impact on the adoption and promotion of free software. From 2003 to 2005, FSF held legal seminars to explain the GPL and the surrounding law. Usually taught by Bradley M. Kuhn and Daniel Ravicher, these seminars offered CLE credit and were the first effort to give formal legal education on the GPL. In 2007, the FSF published the third version of the GNU General Public License after significant outside input.
In December 2008, FSF filed a lawsuit against Cisco for using GPL-licensed components shipped with Linksys products. Cisco was notified of the licensing issue in 2003 but Cisco repeatedly disregarded its obligations under the GPL. In May 2009, Cisco and FSF reached settlement under which Cisco agreed to make a monetary donation to the FSF and appoint a Free Software Director to conduct continuous reviews of the company's license compliance practices.
In September 2019, Richard Stallman resigned as president of the FSF after pressure from journalists and members of the open source community in response to him making controversial comments in defense of Marvin Minsky on Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking scandal. Nevertheless, Stallman remained head of the GNU Project and in 2021, he returned to the FSF board of directors.
Current and ongoing activities The GNU Project
The original purpose of the FSF was to promote the ideals of free software. The organization envisaged the GNU operating system as an example of this.
GNU licenses
The GNU General Public License (GPL) is a widely used license for free software projects. The current version (version 3) was released in June 2007. The FSF has also published the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL), and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).
GNU Press The FSF's publishing department, responsible for "publishing affordable books on computer science using freely distributable licenses."List of books published in GNU Press home site
The Free Software Directory
This is a list of software packages that have been verified as free software. Each package entry contains up to 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. The FSF has received a small amount of funding from UNESCO for this project.
Maintaining the Free Software Definition
FSF maintains many of the documents that define the free software movement for those who accept the authority of the FSF
Project hosting FSF hosts software development projects on its Savannah website.
h-node An abbreviation for "Hardware-Node", the h-node website lists hardware and device drivers that have been verified as compatible with free software. It is user-edited and volunteer supported with hardware entries tested by users before publication.
Advocacy FSF sponsors a number of campaigns against what it perceives as dangers to software freedom, including software patents, digital rights management (which the FSF and others have re-termed "digital restrictions management", as part of its effort to highlight technologies that are "designed to take away and limit your rights",) and user interface copyright. Since 2012, Defective by Design is an FSF-initiated campaign against DRM. It also has a campaign to promote Ogg+Vorbis, a free alternative to proprietary formats like AAC and MQA. FSF also sponsors free software projects it deems "high-priority".
Annual awards
"Outstanding new Free Software contributor", "Award for the Advancement of Free Software" and "Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit"
LibrePlanet wiki The LibrePlanet wiki organizes FSF members into regional groups in order to promote free software activism against digital restrictions management and other issues promoted by the FSF.
High priority projects
The FSF maintains a list of "high-priority projects" to which the Foundation claims that "there is a vital need to draw the free software community's attention". The FSF considers these projects "important because computer users are continually being seduced into using non-free software, because there is no adequate free replacement."
As of 2021, high-priority tasks include reverse engineering proprietary firmware, reversible debugging in GNU Debugger; developing automatic transcription and video editing software, Coreboot, drivers for network routers, a free smartphone operating system and creating replacements for Skype and Siri.
Previous projects highlighted as needing work included the Free Java implementations, GNU Classpath, and GNU Compiler for Java, which ensure compatibility for the Java part of OpenOffice.org, and the GNOME desktop environment (see Java: Licensing).
The effort has been criticized by Michael Larabel for either not instigating active development or for being slow at the work being done, even after certain projects were added to the list.
Endorsements Operating systems The FSF maintains a list of approved Linux operating systems that maintain free software by default: Dragora GNU/Linux-Libre dyne:bolic GNU Guix System Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre Parabola GNU/Linux-libre PureOS Trisquel LibreCMC ProteanOS The project also maintains a list of operating systems that are not versions of the GNU system: Replicant
Discontinued operating systems The following are previously endorsed operating systems that are no longer actively maintained: gNewSense BLAG Linux and GNU Musix GNU+Linux Ututo
Hardware endorsements (RYF)
Since 2012, the FSF maintains a "Respects Your Freedom" (RYF) hardware certification program. To be granted certification, a product must use 100% Free Software, allow user installation of modified software, be free of backdoors and conform with several other requirements.
Structure Board The FSF's board of directors includes professors at leading universities, senior engineers, and founders. Current board members are:
Geoffrey Knauth, senior software engineer at SFA, Inc. (served since October 23, 1997) Christina Haralanova, founding member of the Free Software Association, Bulgaria. Board member of Koumbit, member of FACIL – for the adoption of free software in Quebec (FACiL, pour l'appropriation collective de l'informatique libre) Gerald Jay Sussman, professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (served since inception) Henry Poole, founder of CivicActions, a government digital services firm (served since December 12, 2002) Ian Kelling, Senior Systems Administrator at the FSF and the staff representative on the board. John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and co-designed the DHCP protocol. Maria Chiara Pievatolo is a professor of political philosophy at the University of Pisa. Richard Stallman, founder, launched the GNU project, author of the GNU General Public License.
Previous board members include:
Alexander Oliva, Vice President (served since August 28, 2019) Hal Abelson, founding member,The first GNU's Bulletin (), indicates this list of people as round[ing] out FSF's board of directors. professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (served from inception until March 5, 1998, and rejoined ) Robert J. Chassell, founding treasurer, as well as a founding director (served from inception until June 3, 1997) Miguel de Icaza (served from August 1999The FSF annual filings with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for 1998 and 1999 show that De Icaza was not on the board on 1998-11-01 and was as of 1999-11-01, so he clearly joined sometime between those dates. Those documents further indicate that the 1999 annual meeting occurred in August; usually, new directors are elected at annual meetings. until February 25, 2002The FSF annual filings with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for 2002 () show that De Icaza has left the board. Changes to board composition are usually made at the annual meeting; which occurred on February 25, 2002.) Benjamin Mako Hill, assistant professor at the University of Washington (served from July 25, 2007, until October 2019) Matthew Garrett, software developer (served since October 16, 2014) Bradley Kuhn, executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy and FSF's former executive director (served from March 25, 2010 to Oct 13, 2019) Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University (served from March 28, 2004, until 2008) Eben Moglen (served from July 28, 2000The FSF annual filings with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for 1999 and 2000 show that Moglen was not on the board on November 1, 1999, and was as of November 1, 2000, so he clearly joined sometime between those dates. Those documents further indicate that the 2000 annual meeting occurred on July 28, 2000; usually, new directors are elected at annual meetings. until 2007Moglen announced his intention to resign in his blog (). The resignation likely occurred at the 2007 annual meeting of the directors; the exact date of that meeting is unknown., left the foundation in 2016) Len Tower Jr., founding member, (served until September 2, 1997)