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Free Software Foundation, 36 Years Old, Still Fights for Software Freedom

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Summary: Free software supporters should not forget that in the face of a rather vicious and corporate-backed online mob the FSF brought its founder back to the board; it has since then lessened its dependence on funding from large corporations, which means it deserves more supporters or donations from individuals who value software freedom

THE past few years we wrote hundreds of articles about the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which is 36 this year (it turns 36 in one month and one day). Yes, 36. A lot older than Linux. In past years we noted that the FSF had become a little dependent on a bunch of rather large companies -- which we estimated (based on IRS filings) to account for about half of the FSF's budget.



That's not the case anymore.

"The FSF is definitely still effective and it deserves our support. It's not sucking the teat of Google or IBM or any other very large company."It can take a year or two to gain public access to IRS filings which correspond to a present year, but we suspect that a large majority of the FSF's budget comes from supporters (which in FSF terms means individuals, not corporations which are dubbed "patrons").

In the video above (first video in a while that uses an external camera) I take a look at last night's posts from the FSF. They hire additional people and they still speak out against Apple. The FSF is definitely still effective and it deserves our support. It's not sucking the teat of Google or IBM or any other very large company.

"Just had someone DM me saying they got Google money for their NGO and Google might be terrible but taking their money doesn’t make your organisation bad. So I told them I could probably get them funding from Saudi Arabia and they went silent."

--Aral Balkan this week

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