 | |
| Abbreviation | FSF |
|---|---|
| Motto | Free Software, Free Society |
| Formation | October 4, 1985 |
| Type | 501(c)(3) non-profit organization |
| Legal status | 501(c)(3) |
| Purpose | Educational |
| Headquarters | Boston, Massachusetts, US |
Region served
| Worldwide |
Membership
| Individuals |
President
| Richard Stallman |
Budget
| $1,373,645 in FY 2017 |
Staff
| 11 |
| Website | www |
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, which promotes the universal freedom to study, distribute, create, and modify computer software, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ("share alike") terms, such as with its own GNU General Public License. The FSF was incorporated in Massachusetts, US, 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. Since the mid-1990s, the FSF's 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.
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. The FSF is also the steward of several
free software licenses, meaning it publishes them and has the ability to
make revisions as needed.
The FSF holds the copyrights on many pieces of the GNU system, such as GNU Compiler Collection. As holder of these copyrights, it has the authority to enforce the copyleft requirements of the GNU General Public License (GPL) when copyright infringement occurs on that software.
From 1991 until 2001, 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 by short email exchanges between Stallman and the violator. In the interest of promoting copyleft assertiveness by software companies to the level that the FSF was already doing, in 2004 Harald Welte launched gpl-violations.org.
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. From
2002-2004, high-profile GPL enforcement cases, such as those against Linksys and OpenTV, became frequent.
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, FSF dropped the lawsuit when 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.
Current and ongoing activities
- 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 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 Free Documentation License (GFDL), and the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL).
- 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 that 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.
- 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. 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 MP3 and AAC. FSF also sponsors free software projects it deems "high-priority".
- Annual awards
- "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
gNewSense is a distribution officially supported by the FSF
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."
Current 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 and creating replacements for Skype, Google Earth, OpenDWG libraries, BitTorrent Sync and Oracle Forms.
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.
Hardware endorsements (RYF)
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 back doors and conform with several other requirements.
Currently, a total of 30 products have been granted the certification, including workstations, laptops, a 3D printer, a wireless router, and USB interface wireless adapters.
Structure
Board
The FSF's board of governors
includes amongst themselves professors at leading universities, senior
engineers, and founders. A few high-profile activists, and software
businessmen are admitted as well. Currently on the board there is one
high-profile activist, and one world-class, software-campaign strategist
(Windows 95, et al.). There was once a majorly contributing
programmer (Mono and Gnome) and businessman who lost favor badly.
Founders are also major software developers of the free software in the
GNU Project.
John Sullivan is the current FSF executive director. Previous members that occupied the position were Peter T. Brown (2005–2010) and Bradley M. Kuhn (2001–2005).
Current board members:
- Geoffrey Knauth, senior software engineer at SFA, Inc. (served since October 23, 1997)
- Henry Poole, founder of CivicActions, a government digital services firm (served since December 12, 2002)
- Richard Stallman, founding president, launched the GNU project, author of the GNU General Public License (served as president since inception)
- Gerald Jay Sussman, professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (served since inception)
- Benjamin Mako Hill, assistant professor at the University of Washington (served since July 25, 2007)
- Bradley Kuhn, executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy and FSF's former executive director (served since March 25, 2010)
- Kat Walsh, copyright and technology attorney, free culture and free software advocate, and former chair of the Wikimedia Foundation
Previous board members include:
- Hal Abelson, founding member, professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (served from inception until March 5, 1998, and rejoined circa 2005)
- Robert J. Chassell, founding treasurer, as well as a founding director (served from inception until June 3, 1997)
- Miguel de Icaza (served from August 1999 until February 25, 2002)
- Matthew Garrett, software developer (served since October 16, 2014)
- Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University (served from March 28, 2004 until 2008)
- Eben Moglen (served from July 28, 2000 until 2007)
- Len Tower Jr., founding member, (served until September 2, 1997)
Voting
The FSF Articles of Organization state that the board of directors are elected.
The bylaws say who can vote for them.
The board can grant powers to the Voting Membership.
Employment
At any given time, there are usually around a dozen employees. Most, but not all, work at the FSF headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts.
Membership
On November 25, 2002, the FSF launched the FSF Associate Membership program for individuals. Bradley M. Kuhn (FSF executive director, 2001–2005) launched the program and also signed up as the first Associate Member.
Associate members hold a purely honorary and funding support role to the FSF.
Legal
Eben Moglen and Dan Ravicher previously served individually as pro bono legal counsel to the FSF. After forming the Software Freedom Law Center, Eben Moglen continued to serve as the FSF's general counsel until 2016.
Financial
Most of the FSF funding comes from patrons and members. Revenue streams also come from free-software-related compliance labs, job postings, published works, and a web store. FSF offers speakers and seminars for pay, and all FSF projects accept donations.
Revenues fund free-software programs and campaigns, while cash is invested conservatively in socially responsible investing. The financial strategy is designed to maintain the Foundation's long-term future through economic stability.
The FSF is a tax-exempt organization and posts annual IRS Form 990 filings online.
Criticism
Linus Torvalds has criticized FSF for using GPLv3 as a weapon in the fight against DRM. Torvalds argues that the issue of DRM and that of a software license should be treated as two separate issues.
On June 16, 2010, Joe Brockmeier, a journalist at Linux Magazine, criticized the Defective by Design
campaign by the FSF as "negative" and "juvenile" and not being adequate
for providing users with "credible alternatives" to proprietary
software.
FSF responded to this criticism by saying "that there is a fundamental
difference between speaking out against policies or actions and smear
campaigns", and "that if one is taking an ethical position, it is
justified, and often necessary, to not only speak about the benefits of
freedom but against acts of dispossession and disenfranchisement."
Recognition
The free software movement has become recognized as a global cultural
movement, and the Free Software Foundation has become recognized as an
industry player in software, publishing, economics, jurisprudence,
politics, and other cultural realms.
Key players and industries that have made honorific mention and awards include:
- 2001: GNU Project received the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award for "the ubiquity, breadth, and quality of its freely available redistributable and modifiable software, which has enabled a generation of research and commercial development".
- 2005: Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in the category of "Digital Communities"
