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The 'Free Software Foundation' ('FSF') is a non-profit corporation founded on October 4, 1985 ^[1] 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.
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.
Being consistent with its goals, only free software is used on all of the FSF's computers.^[2]

Contents

Current work of FSF

History

GPL Enforcement

SCO Lawsuit

Structure

Membership

Associate Members

Corporate Patrons

Voting Members

Board of Directors

Current Board of Directors

Other former members of the Board of Directors

Staff and Employees

Legal Representation

Sister organizations

Recognition

References

See also

External links

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 3) was released in June 2007. The FSF has 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.
; 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"

History

GPL Enforcement

The FSF holds the copyrights on various essential pieces of the GNU
system, such as GCC. As copyright holder, it
has exclusive authority to enforce the GPL
when copyright infringement occurs on that software. While other
copyright holders of other software systems adopted the GPL as their
license, the FSF was the only organization to regularly assert its
copyright interests on GPL'd software (until Harald Welte launched
gpl-violations.org in 2004).
From 1991 until 2001, GPL enforcement was done informally, usually by
Stallman himself, often with assistance with FSF's lawyer, Eben Moglen. Typically, GPL violations during this time were cleared up by
short email exchanges between Stallman and the violator.
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
^[3][4][5]. GPL enforcement and educational campaigns on GPL compliance^[6][7] was a major focus of the FSF's efforts during this period.

SCO Lawsuit

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^[8]. During 2003 and 2004, FSF put substantial advocacy effort into
responding to the law suit and quelling its negative impact on the adoption and promotion of free software^[9].

Structure

Membership

Associate Members

On November 25, 2002 the FSF launched the FSF Associate Membership program for individuals^[10]. In March 2005 they had over 3400 associate members.

Corporate Patrons

On March 5, 2003 they launched a Corporate Patron program for commercial entities. As of April 2004, they have 45 corporate patrons.

Voting Members

FSF is governed by a ''voting membership'' that sets the number of directors and elects them to office. Traditionally, the FSF voting membership is a superset of the Board of Directors. The current voting members are (in alphabetical order):

★ Hal Abelson

★ Robert J. Chassell

★ Benjamin Mako Hill

★ Geoffrey Knauth

★ Lawrence Lessig

★ Eben Moglen

★ Henri Poole

★ Richard M. Stallman

★ Gerald Sussman

Board of Directors

Current Board of Directors

★ Hal Abelson, Professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (served from inception until March 5, 1998, and rejoined circa 2005)

★ Geoffery Knauth, Senior Software Engineer at SFA, Inc. (served since October 23, 1997)

★ Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford University (served since March 28, 2004)

★ Henri Poole, Founder of CivicActions, a grassroots campaign technology consulting firm. (served since December 12, 2002)

★ 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 (served since inception)

★ Gerald Sussman, Professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (served since inception)

★ Benjamin Mako Hill, graduate student at the MIT Media Lab. (served since July 25, 2007)

Founding Board of Directors^[11]

★ Hal Abelson

★ Robert J. Chassell, Founding Treasurer, as well as a Founding Director (served from inception until June 3, 1997)

★ Richard Stallman, Founding and only President

★ Gerald Sussman

★ Len Tower Jr. (served from inception until September 2, 1997)

Other former members of the Board of Directors

★ Miguel de Icaza (served from August 1999^[12] until February 25, 2002^[13].)

★ Eben Moglen (served from July 28, 2000^[14] until 2007 ^[15])

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.

Legal Representation

Eben Moglen and Dan Ravicher previously served individually as
pro bono legal counsel to the FSF. Since the forming of the
Software Freedom Law Center, legal services to
the FSF are provided by that organization.

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.

Recognition

★ 1999: Linus Torvalds Award for Open Source Computing^[16]

★ 2005: Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in the category of "Digital Communities"^[17][18]

References

1. Articles of Incorporation, Free Software Foundation
2. Linux, GNU, and freedom Stallman, Richard M.
3. The Legend of Linksys
4. GPL Legal Battle Coming?
5. Linksys/Cisco GPL Violations
6. A Great Learning Opportunity for Software Lawyers - Upcoming GPL Seminar
7. Seminar On Details Of The GPL And Related Licenses
8. SCO Subpoena of FSF
9. The SCO Subpoena of FSF
10. The site member.fsf.org first appears in the Internet Archive in
December 2002, and that site lists the date of the launch as 25 November
2002 ( FSF Membership Page, as of 2002-12-20 ).
11. The first GNU's Bulletin ( GNU'S Bulletin, Volume 1, No.1 ), indicates this list of people as
''round[ing] out FSF's board of directors''.
12. The FSF annual filings with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for 1998 ( 1998 Annual Report for Free Software Foundation, Inc. ) and
1999
( 1999 Annual Report for Free Software Foundation, Inc. ) 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.
13. The FSF annual filings with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for 2002 ( 2002 Annual Report for Free Software Foundation, Inc. ) 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.
14. The FSF annual filings with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for 1999 ( 1999 Annual Report for Free Software Foundation, Inc. ) and
2000
( 2000 Annual Report for Free Software Foundation, Inc. )
show that Moglen was not on the board on 1999-11-01 and was as of
2000-11-01, so he clearly joined sometime between those dates. Those documents further indicate that the 2000 Annual meeting occurred in July 28, 2000; usually, new directors are elected at annual meetings.
15. Moglen announced his intention to resign in his blog ( And Now … Life After GPLv3 ). The resignation likely occurred at the 2007 annual meeting of the directors; the exact date of that meeting is unknown.
16. What I Saw at the Revolution Marsh, Ann
17. Digital Communities, Distinction, Free Software Foundation Ars Electronica Center
18. FSF honored with Prix Ars Electronica award Free Software Foundation

See also

★ Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

★ Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC)

External links

★ The Free Software Foundation web site

★ GNUCHILE Foundation