Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation ( FSF short, German Foundation for free software ) is a foundation that was established as a nonprofit organization in 1985 by Richard Stallman with the purpose to promote free software and to collect funds for this work. Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation is currently John Sullivan.
Until the mid- 1990s, the financial resources of the FSF were used primarily to hiring programmers for the development of free software. Have started since many businesses and individuals to independently write free software, the work of the FSF increasingly focused on legal and structural concerns of the Free Software community.
- 2.1 Board Members
- 2.2 sister organizations
- 2.3 Membership
Work of the FSF
The main task of the FSF is the financial, human, technical and legal support of the GNU project (and hence well as software licenses GPL, LGPL, AGPL and GFDL ). In addition to this work, the FSF seeks simultaneously to provide general advice, reporting and education around free software.
The GPLv3.fsf.org project involves the preparation and communication around the creation of the new version of the GNU licenses.
The GPL Compliance Lab project seeks to punish legal violations of the GNU General Public License, but also against other GNU licenses or rights holders to grant licenses for violations of the legal assistance and advise accordingly. In this context, questions concerning the licensing of software to be answered.
The software of the GNU project is hosted here next to other software from the GNU Savannah project, which provides an infrastructure for the development and coordination of free software.
The Free Software Directory is the central directory of free software.
Campaigns
The FSF Campaign Defective by Design started, against the Digital Rights Management (English Digital Rights Management, DRM from the FSF as Digital Restrictions Management refers ) defends. In DRM, the Free Software Foundation sees the danger of the " destruction of the digital future ."
The campaign BadVista against the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system, the computer user should be aware of the disadvantages of proprietary operating system. In addition, free operating systems, which allow the user more freedom, presented as alternatives. Is criticized, among other things, that the device drivers can be disabled at each update, if Microsoft decides to. This should be done with the equipment manufacturers, if Microsoft has the impression that the corresponding device has built sufficient barriers to prevent the circumvention of the intended use restrictions according to contracts.
Structure
Board members
- Richard Stallman (President): founder of the FSF and the GNU project, former maintainer of various GNU software (including GCC and Emacs ), and co-author of the GNU GPL, in versions 1 and 2
- Geoffery Knauth, Senior Software Engineer at SFA, Inc.
- Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University
- Henri Poole, founder of Civic Actions
- Gerald J. Sussman, professor of computer science at MIT
Sister organizations
On 10 March 2001, the Free Software Foundation Europe was founded to represent the interests of free software in the European space. Since there is no general European-wide scheme for non-profit organizations, acting as an umbrella organization, FSFE for the so-called Chapters in the different countries of Europe. As a sister organization of the Free Software Foundation in the U.S., they concentrated their activities within the GNU project, but not limited to it. FSFE's President Karsten Gerloff is.
FSFE sees it as its main task to coordinate initiatives of free software in Europe to provide a center of excellence for politicians, lawyers and journalists and to provide the infrastructure for free software projects and in particular the GNU project.
In 2003, the Free Software Foundation India was founded in Kerala. On 23 November 2005, was FSLA - Free Software Foundation Latin America in Rosario, Argentina, was founded.
Membership
On 25 November 2002, the FSF started the FSF Associate Membership program for individuals. In March 2005, more than 3,400 members have signed up.
On 5 March 2003, the Corporate Patron Program was launched for businesses to life. Meanwhile, support 45 companies this project.
Awards
The Free Software Foundation, which in turn since the 1998 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software, and since 2005 the Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit awards, has received several major awards: