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Dear Free Software Supporter,
As we reflect on the close of 2022 at the Free Software Foundation
(FSF), I think of how we have been at the center of many of the most
important battles for computer user freedom for decades thanks to the
support of free software advocates like you. This year, we spent much
time looking inwards. We are transitioning to a new management team,
have welcomed new staff members, and have published our progress on
changes related to FSF's board governance. In fact, we should be
opening up our call for FSF board nominees soon.
This work has taken up its fair share of energy from our team of twelve
staff and six volunteer board directors, and we are not done yet. But we
are not just focused on making our organization stronger from the inside
so we can take on many more battles to come. With your support, we also:
Freed the last BIOSes on FSF machines that run both FSF and GNU
infrastructure, as well as community projects. The total entails
fifteen servers in two data centers and our Boston office, over a
hundred virtual machines, and ten workstations and laptops, all
running GNU/Linux, now on fully free systems;
Have given voice to successful free software stories from our global
community through interviews and blogs, like the latest interview
with Moodle, a GPLv3 licensed Learning Management System (LMS) that
has taken remote education by storm, or the one on how the
Eyüpsultan district of Turkey transitioned to using GNU/Linux;
Continued our work on freeing JavaScript with our work on JShelter,
the anti-malware browser extension that protects against
fingerprinting and tracking activities on the Web. The work will
continue, we will include protection against threats like leaky
forms, and we will have to adapt to Google's extension restriction
Manifest V3, which is harmful to privacy efforts such as JShelter;
and
We have been setting up our booth again at in-person
conferences for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic
began. Oh, how we missed speaking with people directly and
creating more free software awareness at events! And we simply
cannot wait to host the LibrePlanet conference in person (and
online) again March 18 and 19, 2023!
As we approach year's end, the campaigns team is focusing their
efforts around sharing. All four of our freedoms are at stake in our
fight against proprietary corporations' continued push for more
control over users. But by putting extra focus on sharing now, we can
illustrate that our fight for user freedom expands to our ability to
share knowledge, information, resources, values, culture, science, and
more. If we are not able to share our improvements, then how could we
possibly progress, or grow our community and convert even more users
to free software?
Can you join this effort as an FSF associate member? You can
start for as little as $10 per month ($5 for students), or $120 per
year. With your support, we can continue to show people how the freedom
to share can affect change in all areas where software touches modern
life. Besides that, your membership gives strength to the idea of
free software. Plus, your membership will count towards achieving our
fall goal of 455 new associate members before December 31, and you
will be eligible for this year's snazzy and secure webcam cover when
you join as an annual associate member at $120 or more. You'll also be
able to enjoy all the member benefits, which include merchandise
discounts, a 16GB bootable membership card, and use of our associate
member videoconferencing server.
Our attention and strength in numbers is needed in many more areas
today than it has ever been before, but our resources are limited.
With your support, we can continue to drive change, build upon the
work done in the last thirty-seven years, and recruit others to do the
same. We cannot do this alone! As a true leader in this movement, it
is vital that we expand our community, support experiments and great
initiatives, give free software voices a place to tell their stories,
and continue our advocacy for the four freedoms. Only then can we
inspire more people and organizations to be at the center of the
battles for freedom we're in right now, and the ones to come.
