The Free Software Foundation celebrated its 40th anniversary. In 1985, a year after the establishment of the GNU project, Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation. The organization was created to protect against companies with questionable reputations that were caught appropriating code and attempting to sell some of the first tools of the GNU project developed by Stallman and his colleagues. Three years after the foundation of the organization, Stallman prepared the first version of the GPL license, defining the legal framework for the distribution model of free software.
On September 17, 2019, Stallman left his position as president of the FSF, and in 2020, Jeffrey Knauth was elected to replace him, followed shortly by Jan Kelling. In response to a question about his plans, the new president mentioned strengthening the FSF's capabilities to counter new threats to user freedom and attracting new supporters to the free software movement.
At the event dedicated to the 40th anniversary, Zoë Kooyman, Executive Director of the FSF, presented a new project — LibrePhone, aimed at providing complete freedom of computing on mobile devices. Details about the initiative are not yet disclosed, only that it will help convey to mobile users the basic concepts of software freedom, such as the right to run, copy, distribute, study, modify, and improve software. The project is overseen by Rob Savoye, a recipient of the award for promoting and developing free software, the creator of the free Flash player Gnash, and a participant in the development of GCC, Debian, GDB, DejaGnu, Newlib, Cygwin, One Laptop Per Child, and Expect.
Source: opennet.ru
