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Read and share online:
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/we-cant-advocate-for-freedom-without-your-help.
Dear Free Software Supporter,
It's getting harder to live in freedom and it shouldn't have to be.
Right now, around the world, Big Tech monopolies are attempting to
normalize signing your digital autonomy away not only for convenience,
but for basic needs. So-called artificial intelligence has only
accelerated this. It's not just our basic computations that are being
sent off to the "cloud," but more and more aspects of our daily lives,
whether we want it or not. It's now commonplace to offload our
thoughts to a GPU farm in Abilene, Texas before we're able to take
that first step in cooking a meal, studying for a test, or even
sending an email. Things don't have to be this way.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded forty years ago in
an effort to support GNU, the first operating system and first
project to recognize why nonfree software is dangerous and do
something about it. We've come a long way since then. GNU has arrived;
I'm using it to write you now. But we need to do more. The software
our community produced now powers the world; we ourselves have used it
to carve out a niche in modern digital life where we know we can be
free. That's not enough. Free software like GNU is needed now more than
ever, by everyone, not just the technically capable.
Our advocacy and approaches to campaigning for your freedom have
changed over the years, but we've always kept our focus. When we saw
the proprietary software we call Digital Restrictions
Management (DRM) on the rise, we created the Defective by
Design campaign and launched the International Day Against DRM,
which we'll be writing you about soon. We've combated bulk government
surveillance, supported the right to repair, and have done
our best to make starting the free software journey something
more accessible than purchasing an eighteen year-old laptop and going
it alone. We may be getting closer to dystopia by the day, but we're
not down for the count yet. The FSF will continue to do everything in
its power to keep that dystopia from happening, always working for a
world where the machine serves you and not the other way around.
In just this year, we've launched projects like Librephone,
promoted LibreLocal community meetups worldwide, held the
FSF40 event in Boston, and recently hosted our first
hackathon -- but you are the one who really makes all of it
possible. We need your help to take our next steps. We can't do it
alone.
As I write this, we've just grown the campaigns team back to its full
three members. We're fully free, fully functional, but we need your
support to keep pushing freedom forward. We need only $125,000 more of
our $400,000 goal. For forty years, the FSF has helped spearhead the
free software movement, but we can't continue operating without your
support. As threats to our individual and collective freedom become
more and more commonplace, we need you now more than ever.
Every dollar we receive funds our work, including the Defective by
Design campaign, the free software Licensing and
Compliance Lab, and the GNU Project, among many other initiatives. We
know not everyone is in a position to, but if you can, will you
support the FSF and our important work? One-time donations,
associate memberships, and sponsored memberships all help
us reach our fundraising goal of $400,000 USD by January
1, 2026.
Thanks for being someone we can depend upon. You can depend on us to
keep pushing the mission forward.
Hack the planet,
Greg Farough
Campaigns Manager
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