Misplaced Pages

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39-538: The text of the Unlicense is as follows: The Free Software Foundation states that "Both public domain works and the lax license provided by the Unlicense are compatible with the GNU GPL." Google does not allow its employees to contribute to projects under public domain equivalent licenses like the Unlicense (and CC0), while allowing contributions to 0BSD licensed and US government PD projects. Notable projects that use

78-407: A charitable organization . A mutual-benefit corporation can be non-profit or not-for-profit, but it still must pay regular corporate tax rates. A mutual benefit corporation will pay the same taxes as a regular for-profit corporation, with C corporation tax rates. Mutual benefit corporations must still file tax returns and pay income tax because they are not formed for a purpose from which anyone in

117-457: A state government , and organized primarily or exclusively for social , educational , recreational or charitable purposes by like-minded citizens. Public-benefit nonprofit corporations are distinct in the law from mutual-benefit nonprofit corporations in that they are organized for the general public benefit , rather than for the interest of its members. They are also distinct in the law from religious corporations. A religious corporation

156-482: 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

195-497: 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

234-617: 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

273-591: 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 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

312-554: Is "a more comprehensive legal text". However, in July 2022, the CC0 license became unsupported and software to be released in the Fedora distribution must not be under CC0, due to CC0 not waiving patent rights . 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

351-519: 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

390-473: 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 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

429-476: Is a nonprofit corporation organized to promote religious purposes. Often these types of corporations are recognized under the law on a subnational level, for instance by a state or province government. The government agency responsible for regulating such corporations is usually the official holder of records, for instance a state Secretary of State . Religious corporations are formed like all other nonprofit corporations by filing articles of incorporation with

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468-474: 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

507-474: 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, 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

546-508: 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

585-512: 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 ,

624-462: 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 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

663-579: The impracticability of copyright law . On January 23, 2010, Bendiken followed-up on his initial post. In this post, he explained that the Unlicense is based on the copyright waiver of SQLite with the no-warranty statement from the MIT License . He then walked through the license, commenting on each part. In a post published in December 2010, Bendiken further clarified what it means to "license" and "unlicense" software. In December 2010, Mike Linksvayer ,

702-462: 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 the FSF. The FSF maintains a list of "high-priority projects" to which the Foundation claims that "there is a vital need to draw

741-546: 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

780-534: 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 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

819-526: 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 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

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858-834: 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 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

897-530: 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. Nonprofit corporation A nonprofit corporation is any legal entity which has been incorporated under

936-462: The Unlicense include youtube-dl , Second Reality , and the source code of the 1995 video game Gloom . In a post published on January 1 ( Public Domain Day ), 2010, Arto Bendiken, the author of the Unlicense, outlined his reasons for preferring public domain software, namely: the nuisance of dealing with licensing terms (for instance license incompatibility ), the threat inherent in copyright law , and

975-452: The Unlicense". In January 2012, when discussed on OSI 's license-review mailing list, the Unlicense was brushed off as a crayon license . In particular, it was criticized for being possibly inconsistent and non-standard, and for making it difficult for some projects to accept Unlicensed code as third-party contributions; leaving too much room for interpretation; and possibly being incoherent in some legal systems. A request for legacy approval

1014-516: 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 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

1053-541: The documents that define the free software movement. FSF hosts software development projects on its Savannah website. An abbreviation for "Hardware-Node", 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

1092-417: 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 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

1131-630: The inspections or regulations governing non-religious groups performing the same services. Religious corporations are permitted to designate a person to act in the capacity of corporation sole . A mutual-benefit nonprofit corporation or membership corporation, in the United States, is a type of nonprofit corporation chartered by a state government that exists to serve its members in ways other than obtaining and distributing profits to them. Therefore, it cannot obtain IRS 501(c)(3) non-profit status as

1170-402: The law of its jurisdiction for purposes other than making profits for its owners or shareholders. Depending on the laws of the jurisdiction, a nonprofit corporation may seek official recognition as such, and may be taxed differently from for-profit corporations , and treated differently in other ways. A public-benefit nonprofit corporation is a type of nonprofit corporation chartered by

1209-586: 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

Unlicense - Misplaced Pages Continue

1248-476: 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 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

1287-480: The state. Religious corporation articles need to have the standard tax exempt language the IRS requires. Religious corporations are subject to less rigorous state and federal filing and reporting requirements than many other tax-exempt organizations, such as mutual benefit nonprofit corporations , or public benefit nonprofit corporations . Depending on the state in which they are located, they may also be exempt from some of

1326-493: The vice president of Creative Commons at the time, wrote in an identi.ca conversation "I like the movement" in speaking of the Unlicense effort, considering it compatible with the goals of the CC Zero (CC0) license, released in 2009. On January 1, 2011, Bendiken reviewed the progress and adoption of the Unlicense, saying it was "difficult to give estimates of current Unlicense adoption" but there were "many hundreds of projects using

1365-550: 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 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

1404-410: 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

1443-406: 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

1482-422: 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 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

1521-503: Was filed in March 2020, which led to a formal approval in June 2020, with an acknowledgement of a "general agreement that the document is poorly drafted". In 2015, GitHub reported that approximately 102,000 of their 5.1 million licensed projects (2% of licensed projects on GitHub.com) used the Unlicense. Until 2022, the Fedora Project recommended CC0 over the Unlicense because the former

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