Free Software Foundation


Free Software Foundation

(body)(FSF) An organisation devoted to the creation anddissemination of free software, i.e. software that is freefrom licensing fees or restrictions on use. The Foundation'smain work is supporting the GNU project, started by Richard Stallman (RMS), partly to proselytise for his position thatinformation is community property and all software sourceshould be shared.

The GNU project has developed the GNU Emacs editor and a Ccompiler, gcc, replacements for many Unix utilities and manyother tools. A complete Unix-like operating system (HURD)is in the works (April 1994).

Software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, which also provides a good summary of theFoundation's goals and principles. The Free SoftwareFoundation raises most of its funds from distributing itssoftware, although it is a charity rather than a company.Although the software is freely available (e.g. by FTP - seebelow) users are encouraged to support the work of the FSF bypaying for their distribution service or by making donations.

One of the slogans of the FSF is "Help stamp out softwarehoarding!" This remains controversial because authors want toown, assign and sell the results of their labour. However,many hackers who disagree with RMS have neverthelesscooperated to produce large amounts of high-quality softwarefor free redistribution under the Free Software Foundation'simprimatur.

See copyleft, General Public Virus, GNU archive site.

ftp://ftp.gnu.ai.mit.edu.

Unofficial WWW pages: PDX, DeLorie.

E-mail: .

Address: Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 MassachusettsAvenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Telephone: +1 (617) 876 3296.

Free Software Foundation

(Free Software Foundation, Inc., Boston, MA, www.gnu.org) A non-profit organization founded in 1985 by Richard Stallman, dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying and modifying programs by promoting the development and use of freely redistributable software. It oversees the development of software for its GNU computing environment and provides online and CD-ROM distribution of GNU and other programs. See free software, GNU Manifesto, GNU, GNU/Linux and League for Programming Freedom.