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Dear Free Software Supporter,

Just like that, the fortieth anniversary celebration of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has come and gone. For forty years, the FSF has been creating the world we want to see -- a world where people, not corporations, control the technology they use. What began as a simple call for people to stand up for their diminishing freedom in computing has evolved into a powerful global force at the core of most technology we use today.

The founding principle of the FSF, freedom, has been criticized over the years. Free software has always served technological progress, and it is not in spite of its focus on freedom, but because of it, that this work is now powering much of our daily computing, forty years after the initial free software programs were released.

The FSF is not just a voice for our digital freedoms -- we created the philosophical foundation, built the software, and wrote the strong copyleft license to protect it. We have shaped it all these years with the work we do in our advocacy, education, copyleft, and technical work. In these last few months alone:

• We celebrated forty years of defending user rights in person with the community as well as online. It was a day full of forward-focused talks and panels from our founding and newest board members; prominent representatives of organizations focused on digital freedoms who discussed privacy, surveillance, and mobile phone applications; and exceptional volunteers and local organizers. All these different voices help reaffirm our strength and limitless potential as a community.

• We launched a groundbreaking project in mobile phone freedom, where most of current-day computing is done. There is a wide range of different kinds of nonfree software that commonly appears in even the most progressive operating systems that run free software on mobile phones. Librephone is our project for working towards reverse-engineering that software. This work will help us guarantee software freedom even as where we do our computing changes.

• We have made significant progress in defining our free machine learning criteria, have shared it with important community members, and are processing the feedback we are receiving. We deeply appreciate the different perspectives and suggestions which help us be informed and ground our work in reality, skill, and shared knowledge.

• We continue to invest in our hardware and explore free software solutions to manage the traffic abuse on our servers through the myriad DDOS and machine learning crawling attacks we have been experiencing for over a year now.

On top of all this, we also elected a new FSF president. Ian Kelling is ready to take on any challenges in the decades to come. I personally asked him some questions in the latest edition of our Free Software Bulletin, which is on its way to associate members globally, and the online version will be posted soon.

The free software movement is powered by people like you, individuals who believe that software should respect our freedom and community. Our software freedom is threatened every day by corporations with billion-dollar budgets which have happily extracted the work of others to create their fortune, but in return exploit their users. Success has never been guaranteed, but we are used to working against all odds, with your help.

Your support has helped us work toward creating the world we want to see. We know not everyone is in a position to, but if you can, can you support our efforts by donating to the FSF? If 10% of people reading this message donate $12 US (one month's worth of associate member dues, we will achieve our goal of $400,000 US and increase our strength significantly.

Political pressures, financial constraints, and operational difficulties test our organization and we cannot face them alone. A lot has changed in forty years, our global movement is growing, but if we don't preserve and spread our message, Big Tech will erase all that we have achieved. The FSF continues to stand steadfast by our mission and we lead by example. With your help, we can shape a future where technology serves everyone.

Yours in freedom,

Zoë Kooyman
Executive Director