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42-602: The specification was originally created in 1995 and developed by the Free Software Foundation . GNU Hurd , VMware ESXi, Xen , and L4 microkernels all need to be booted using this method. GNU GRUB is the reference implementation used in the GNU operating system and other operating systems.  As of July 2019, the latest version of Multiboot specification is 0.6.96, defined in 2009. An incompatible second iteration with UEFI support, Multiboot2 specification ,

84-482: A web store . FSF offers speakers and seminars for pay, and all FSF projects accept donations. Revenues fund free-software programs and campaigns, while cash is invested conservatively in socially responsible investing . The financial strategy is designed to maintain the Foundation's long-term future through economic stability. The FSF is a tax-exempt organization and posts annual IRS Form 990 filings online. Through

126-497: A "Respects Your Freedom" (RYF) hardware certification program. To be granted certification, a product must use 100% Free Software, allow user installation of modified software, be free of backdoors and conform with several other requirements. The FSF's board of directors includes professors at leading universities, senior engineers, and founders. Current board members are: Previous board members include: Executive directors include: The FSF Articles of Organization state that

168-617: A free smartphone operating system and creating replacements for Skype and Siri . Previous projects highlighted as needing work included the Free Java implementations , GNU Classpath , and GNU Compiler for Java , which ensure compatibility for the Java part of OpenOffice.org , and the GNOME desktop environment (see Java: Licensing ). The effort has been criticized by Michael Larabel for either not instigating active development or for being slow at

210-421: A little in order to produce a sounder ecology for all. Think kindly about the idea of sharing." Moglen has criticized trends which result in "excluding people from knowledge". On the issue of free software versus proprietary software, he has argued that "much has been said by the few who stand to lose". Moglen calls for a "sensible respect for both the creators and users" of software code. In general, this concept

252-544: A magic number to find the header, which is 0x1BADB002 ("1 bad boot") for Multiboot and 0xE85250D6 for Multiboot2. In the header, entry_addr points to the code where control is handed over to the OS. This allows different executable file formats (see Comparison of executable file formats ). If the OS kernel is an ELF file ( Executable and Linkable Format ), which it is for the Linux kernel, this can be omitted for Multiboot2. The ELF format

294-474: Is professor of law and legal history at Columbia University , and is the founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center . Moglen started out as a computer programming language designer and then received his bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College in 1980. In 1985, he received a Master of Philosophy in history and a JD from Yale University . He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University , Tel Aviv University and

336-451: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation ( FSF ) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement , with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ("share alike") terms, such as with its own GNU General Public License . The FSF

378-569: Is a fundamental difference between speaking out against policies or actions and smear campaigns", and "that if one is taking an ethical position, it is justified, and often necessary, to not only speak about the benefits of freedom but against acts of dispossession and disenfranchisement." In 2009, a license update of LibDWG/ LibreDWG to version 3 of the GNU GPL made it impossible for the free software projects LibreCAD and FreeCAD to use LibreDWG legally. Many projects voiced their unhappiness about

420-498: Is a fundamental requirement for a democratic and free society in which we are surrounded by and dependent upon technical devices. Only if controlling these devices is open to all via free software, can we balance power equally. Moglen believes the idea of proprietary software is as ludicrous as having "proprietary mathematics" or "proprietary geometry". This would convert the subjects from "something you can learn" into "something you must buy", he has argued. He points out that software

462-401: Is a part of what Moglen has termed a "revolution" against the privileged owners of media, distribution channels, and software. On March 13, 2009, in a speech given at Seattle University , Moglen said of the free software movement that, " 'When everybody owns the press, then freedom of the press belongs to everybody' seems to be the inevitable inference, and that's where we are moving, and when

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504-510: Is also the steward of several free software licenses, meaning it publishes them and has the ability to make revisions as needed. The FSF holds the copyrights on many pieces of the GNU system, such as GNU Compiler Collection . As the holder of these copyrights, it has authority to enforce the copyleft requirements of the GNU General Public License (GPL) when copyright infringement occurs. From 1991 until 2001, GPL enforcement

546-499: Is among the "things which can be copied infinitely over and over again, without any further costs". Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law is the idea that the information appearance and flow between the human minds connected via the Internet works like electromagnetic induction . Hence Moglen's phrase "Resist the resistance!" (i.e. remove anything that inhibits the flow of information). Moglen has criticized what he calls

588-618: Is an FSF-initiated campaign against DRM. It also has a campaign to promote Ogg + Vorbis , a free alternative to proprietary formats like AAC and MQA . FSF also sponsors free software projects it deems "high-priority". " Outstanding new Free Software contributor ", " Award for the Advancement of Free Software " and " Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit " The LibrePlanet wiki organizes FSF members into regional groups in order to promote free software activism against digital restrictions management and other issues promoted by

630-520: Is solicited. Eben Moglen and Dan Ravicher previously served individually as pro bono legal counsel to the FSF. After forming the Software Freedom Law Center , Eben Moglen continued to serve as the FSF's general counsel until 2016. Most of the FSF funding comes from patrons and members. Revenue streams also come from free-software-related compliance labs, job postings, published works, and

672-402: Is very common in the open source world and has its own field ( e_entry ) containing the entry point. Before jumping to the OS entry point, the boot loader must provide a boot information structure to tell the OS how it left the system; for Multiboot, this is a struct, and for Multiboot2, every field (group) has a type tag and a size. This standards - or measurement -related article

714-653: The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL). The FSF's publishing department, responsible for "publishing affordable books on computer science using freely distributable licenses." This is a list of software packages that have been verified as free software. Each package entry contains up to 47 pieces of information such as

756-588: The University of Virginia since 1987. He was a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall (1986–87 term). He joined the faculty of Columbia Law School in 1987, and was admitted to the New York bar in 1988. He received a Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1993. Moglen serves as a director of the Public Patent Foundation . Moglen was part of Philip Zimmermann 's defense team, when Zimmermann

798-508: The board of directors are elected. The bylaws say who can vote for them. The board can grant powers to the Voting Membership. At any given time, there are usually around a dozen employees. Most, but not all, worked at the FSF headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts until August 2024 when the FSF closed its offices and switched to remote work. On November 25, 2002, the FSF launched

840-618: The h-node website lists hardware and device drivers that have been verified as compatible with free software. It is user-edited and volunteer supported with hardware entries tested by users before publication. FSF sponsors a number of campaigns against what it perceives as dangers to software freedom, including software patents , digital rights management (which the FSF and others have re-termed "digital restrictions management", as part of its effort to highlight technologies that are "designed to take away and limit your rights", ) and user interface copyright. Since 2012, Defective by Design

882-514: The "reification of selfishness". He has said, "A world full of computers which you can't understand, can't fix and can't use (because it is controlled by inaccessible proprietary software) is a world controlled by machines." He has called on lawyers to help the Free Software movement, saying: "Those who want to share their code can make products and share their work without additional legal risks." He urged his legal colleagues, "It's worth giving up

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924-546: The FSF Associate Membership program for individuals. Bradley M. Kuhn (FSF executive director, 2001–2005) launched the program and also signed up as the first Associate Member Associate members are primarily an honorary and funding support role. In 2023, associate members gained the ability to make board nominations, along with FSF staff and FSF voting members. There is also an annual meeting of FSF members, usually during lunch at LibrePlanet, in which feedback for FSF

966-421: The FSF aims to use only free software on its own computers. The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985 as a non-profit corporation supporting free software development. It continued existing GNU projects such as the sale of manuals and tapes , and employed developers of the free software system. Since then, it has continued these activities, as well as advocating for the free software movement. The FSF

1008-643: The FSF. The FSF maintains a list of "high-priority projects" to which the Foundation claims that "there is a vital need to draw the free software community 's attention". The FSF considers these projects "important because computer users are continually being seduced into using non-free software , because there is no adequate free replacement." As of 2021, high-priority tasks include reverse engineering proprietary firmware, reversible debugging in GNU Debugger ; developing automatic transcription and video editing software, Coreboot , drivers for network routers ,

1050-555: The GNU Project and in 2021, he returned to the FSF board of directors. The original purpose of the FSF was to promote the ideals of free software. The organization envisaged the GNU operating system as an example of this. The GNU General Public License (GPL) is a widely used license for free software projects. The current version (version 3) was released in June 2007. The FSF has also published

1092-647: The GPL. In May 2009, Cisco and FSF reached settlement under which Cisco agreed to make a monetary donation to the FSF and appoint a Free Software Director to conduct continuous reviews of the company's license compliance practices. In September 2019, Richard Stallman resigned as president of the FSF after pressure from journalists and members of the open source community in response to him making controversial comments in defense of Marvin Minsky on Jeffrey Epstein 's sex trafficking scandal. Nevertheless, Stallman remained head of

1134-504: The GPLv3 license selection for LibreDWG, such as FreeCAD , LibreCAD , Assimp , and Blender . Some suggested the selection of a license with a broader license compatibility , for instance the MIT , BSD , or LGPL 2.1. A request went to the FSF to relicense GNU LibreDWG as GPLv2, which was rejected in 2012. Eben Moglen Eben Moglen (born July 13, 1959) is an American legal scholar who

1176-626: The Software Freedom Law Center and with Moglen following allegations of abusive behaviour towards employees and community members. The same day, Bradley M. Kuhn publicly accused Moglen of being an abusive employer and of hostility toward the LGBTQIA+ community , stating that the Software Freedom Law Center is no longer a safe space and that he's often worried about Moglen's students. Such behaviours have also been asserted since 2017 by Matthew Garrett . Moglen says that free software

1218-683: The Software Freedom Law Center. In February 2011, Moglen created the Freedom Box Foundation to design software for a very small server called the FreedomBox . The FreedomBox aims to be an affordable personal server which runs only free software, with a focus on anonymous and secure communication. FreedomBox launched version 0.1 in 2012. In October 2023 the Free Software Foundation Europe and Software Freedom Conservancy announced their intention to end their cooperation with

1260-517: The assistance of Moglen, David Turner, and Peter T. Brown , formalized these efforts into FSF's GPL Compliance Labs. From 2002–2004, high-profile GPL enforcement cases, such as those against Linksys and OpenTV, became frequent. GPL enforcement and educational campaigns on GPL compliance was a major focus of the FSF's efforts during this period. In March 2003, SCO filed suit against IBM alleging that IBM's contributions to various free software, including FSF's GNU, violated SCO's rights. While FSF

1302-406: The first effort to give formal legal education on the GPL. In 2007, the FSF published the third version of the GNU General Public License after significant outside input. In December 2008, FSF filed a lawsuit against Cisco for using GPL-licensed components shipped with Linksys products. Cisco was notified of the licensing issue in 2003 but Cisco repeatedly disregarded its obligations under

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1344-586: The license itself. Linus Torvalds has criticized FSF for using GPLv3 as a weapon in the fight against DRM. Torvalds argues that the issue of DRM and that of a software license should be treated as two separate issues. On June 16, 2010, Joe Brockmeier, a journalist at Linux Magazine , criticized the Defective by Design campaign by the FSF as "negative" and "juvenile" and not being adequate for providing users with "credible alternatives" to proprietary software. FSF responded to this criticism by saying "that there

1386-495: The project's homepage, developers, programming language, etc. The goals are to provide a search engine for free software, and to provide a cross-reference for users to check if a package has been verified as being free software. The FSF has received a small amount of funding from UNESCO for this project. FSF maintains many of the documents that define the free software movement. FSF hosts software development projects on its Savannah website. An abbreviation for "Hardware-Node",

1428-512: The publishers get used to that, they'll become us, and we'll become them, and the first amendment will mean: ' Congress shall make no law ... abridging freedom of speech, or of the press ...', not – as they have tended to argue in the course of the 20th century – 'Congress shall make no law infringing the sacred right of the Sulzbergers to be different'." On the subject of digital rights management , Moglen said in 2006, "We also live in

1470-410: The work being done, even after certain projects were added to the list. The FSF maintains a list of approved Linux operating systems that maintain free software by default: The project also maintains a list of operating systems that are not versions of the GNU system: The following are previously endorsed operating systems that are no longer actively maintained : Since 2012, the FSF maintains

1512-406: The years the FSF has had its postal address, and until August 31st 2024 when going all remote its physical headquarters, at different locations in Boston , Massachusetts , USA , as indicated in the table below. As the GNU GPL v2 included the FSF's postal address in one of the first lines of the introduction and the source code license notice template every change of address also caused updates to

1554-463: Was being investigated over the export of Pretty Good Privacy , a public key encryption system, under US export laws . In 2003 he received the EFF Pioneer Award . In February 2005, he founded the Software Freedom Law Center. Moglen was closely involved with the Free Software Foundation , serving as general counsel from 1994 to 2016 and board member from 2000 to 2007. As counsel, Moglen

1596-465: Was done informally, usually by Stallman himself, often with assistance from FSF's lawyer, Eben Moglen . Typically, GPL violations during this time were cleared up by short email exchanges between Stallman and the violator. In the interest of promoting copyleft assertiveness by software companies to the level that the FSF was already doing, in 2004 Harald Welte launched gpl-violations.org . In late 2001, Bradley M. Kuhn (then executive director), with

1638-512: Was incorporated in Boston, Massachusetts , United States, where it is also based. From its founding until the mid-1990s, FSF's funds were mostly used to employ software developers to write free software for the GNU Project and its employees and volunteers have mostly worked on legal and structural issues for the free software movement and the free software community . Consistent with its goals,

1680-526: Was later introduced. As of April 2019, the latest version of Multiboot2 is 2.0, defined in 2016. While Multiboot defines a header as a struct, which needs to be present in the image file as a whole, in Multiboot2, fields or group of fields have a type tag, which allows them to be omitted from the Multiboot2 header. Within the OS image file, the header must be in the first 8192 (2) bytes for Multiboot and 32768 (2) bytes for Multiboot2. The loader searches for

1722-440: Was never a party to the lawsuit, FSF was subpoenaed on November 5, 2003. During 2003 and 2004, FSF put substantial advocacy effort into responding to the lawsuit and quelling its negative impact on the adoption and promotion of free software. From 2003 to 2005, FSF held legal seminars to explain the GPL and the surrounding law. Usually taught by Bradley M. Kuhn and Daniel Ravicher , these seminars offered CLE credit and were

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1764-624: Was tasked with enforcing the GNU General Public License (GPL) on behalf of the FSF, and later became heavily involved with drafting version 3 of the GPL. On April 23, 2007 he announced in a blog post that he would be stepping down from the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation. Moglen stated that after the GPLv3 Discussion Draft 3 had been released, he wanted to devote more time to writing, teaching, and

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