Free Software Foundation

botond published 2020/01/31, p - 11:02 time

Content

 

Overview

The Free Software Foundation, or FSF for short, is a nonprofit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 1985, 4 to support the free software movement, which promotes universal freedom to study, distribute, create, and modify computer software. The software is provided by Copyleft ("share like") is distributed under conditions, such as under its own GNU General Public license. The FSF was founded in Massachusetts, USA, where it is also based.

From its inception to the mid-1990s, FSF's assets were mainly used by software developers to write free software for the GNU project. Subsequently, FSF staff and supporters focused on legal and structural issues for the free software movement and the free software community.

In accordance with the FSF's objectives, you intend to use only free software on your own computers.

 

 

history

The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985 as a non-profit company that supports free software development. He continued existing GNU projects, such as selling manuals and tapes, and employed developers of the free software system. It has been pursuing these activities ever since, as well as supporting the free software movement. FSF is also the manager of several free software licenses, that is, they publish them and can modify them if necessary.

FSF owns copyrights to many parts of the GNU system, such as GCC (GNU Compiler Collection). As the copyright holder, you are entitled to enforce the copyleft requirements of the GNU GPL (General Public License) in the event of a copyright infringement of any of the applicable software.

Between 2003 and 2005, the FSF also held legal seminars on the GPL and related laws. These were the first efforts to provide formal legal education about the GPL.

In 2007, the FSF released the third version of the GNU General Public License.

In December 2008, the FSF filed a lawsuit against Cisco for using GPL-licensed components shipped with Linksys products. Cisco was notified of licensing issues as early as 2003, but the company repeatedly disregarded its obligations under the GPL. In May 2009, the FSF dropped the lawsuit when Cisco agreed to make a monetary donation to the FSF and appointed a free software director to continually review the company’s licensing practices.

 

activities

The GNU Project

The original purpose of the FSF was to promote the ideas of free software. As an example, the organization developed the GNU operating system.

GNU licenses

  • GPL (GNU General Public License): A widely used license for free software projects. The current version (version 3) was released in June 2007.
  • LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License): The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate the software component released under the LGPL into their own (even proprietary) software without the need for a strong copyleft license to release the source code for their own component.
  • GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License): It is similar to the GPL, which gives readers the right to copy, redistribute, and modify a work (except for "invariant sections") and requires that all copies and derivatives be available under the same license.
  • AGPL (GNU General Public License): This is a free copyleft license issued by the FSF in November 2007 and is based on the GNU GPL version 3 and the Affero General Public License (AGPL).

GNU Press

The publishing department of the Free Software Foundation, which is responsible for "publishing affordable computer books using freely redistributable licenses."

Free Software Directory

This is a list of software packages whose items have been certified as free software. Each package entry contains 47 pieces of information, such as the project website, developers, programming language, and so on. The goal is to provide a search engine for free software, as well as a cross-reference for users to verify that the package has been verified as free software. The FSF received a small amount of support from the UNESCOfrom to the project. Hopefully the library will be translated into many languages ​​in the future.

Maintaining Free Software Definition

The FSF maintains a number of documents defining the free software movement (Free Software Definition).

Self-managed projects

FSF runs software development projects Savannah website.

h-node

Abbreviation for "Hardware-Node," the h-node Web site lists the hardware and device drivers that have been checked for compatibility with free software. This is a list of user-edited and voluntarily supported hardware entries, the elements of which are tested by users before publication.

patronage

The Free Software Foundation sponsors a number of campaigns despite perceiving them as a threat to software freedom, including software patents and digital rights management - which the FSF calls ‘digital restrictions management’ (DRM) - and the copyright of the user interface. Defective by Design is an FSF-initiated campaign against DRM. It is also running a campaign to promote Ogg + Vorbis, a free alternative to proprietary formats such as MP3 and AAC. The FSF also supports free software projects that are considered "high priority."

Annual honors

The FSF gives two awards a year. Since 1998, the "Advancement of Free Software" award and since 2005 the "Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit".

FreePlanet

Founded by FSF FreePlanet organizes FSF members into regional groups who hold an annual international conference for local communities and organizations. The organization aims to support free software activism against digital restriction management (DRM) and other issues deemed important by the FSF.

 

 

Priority Projects

The Free Software Foundation maintains a list of "Priority Projects" for which the Foundation claims "it is essential to raise awareness of the free software community"According to the FSF, these projects."are important because computer users are constantly seduced to use non-free software because there is no suitable free alternative."

Current priority tasks include redesigning protected firmware (reverse engineering), reversible debugging a GNU Debuggerin, automatic transcription and video editing software development, Core Boot, developing drivers for network routers, and creating free software alternatives for Skype, Google Earth, OpenDWG libraries, BitTorrent Sync and Oracle Forms.

Previous projects that still require work include Free Java implementations, a GNU Classpath and the GNU Compiler for Java, which ensure the compatibility of the Java part of OpenOffice.org, and GNOME desktop environment.