FSF, Guardian of the GNU Project, to Reach $400,000 in Winter Fundraiser Ahead of 40th Anniversary
The GNU Project turns 42 later this year in September
The eminent founder of the GNU Project and the FSF - that's RMS (Richard Stallman) - will be giving a public talk in Europe almost exactly a day from now [1, 2] (he has more talks planned after that). It'll be the last day of the fundraising campaign by the FSF. With almost two days to go, the FSF is about $3.5k short of the target, so it's likely they'll make it to $400k around the time he gives the talk and only hours before the deadline. "We use these funds to help us defend the freedoms and rights of all computer users, to nurture the GNU Project," explains the FSF.
If this impending livestream is correct (seems legitimate on the surface), RMS is scheduled to give another talk 3 days later:
RMS speaks a lot in Europe. Had he spoken more in the United States, that would be "news".
Tomorrow he will speak in Switzerland (English, albeit questions can be accepted in French too), where he gave a number of talks last year as well. He also celebrated GNU's 40th anniversary there. What is it about Switzerland that attracts RMS? We can only speculate. Remember that the founder of the FSFE (before it became rogue) was connected to Switzerland and has a very positive opinion of RMS (I saw him in Identi.ca back in the old days; he was actively defending RMS from critics; I never forgot this!).
An FSFE under the leadership of Georg would not call for the removal of RMS from the FSF. Georg was a good guy. He still is. We miss his leadership and charisma.
To clarify the situation as I understand it (I've watched this closely for nearly two decades), nowadays the FSFE - which is not "FSF Europe" - represents the interests of large companies, including Microsoft. Many members who funded or even co-founded it are no longer there. After Daniel Pocock blew the whistle (as an elected insider, voted for by Fellows) the reputation of this organisation sank a lot and lots of people left. Mr. Pocock showed that the Free Software Foundation (the real one, the one in Boston) was not happy about what the FSFE had done/become (basically sucking up donations from Europeans, who wrongly assumed FSFE was just some 'branch' of the Free Software Foundation). As an associate keeps reminding us, clarifying this point again and again is crucial, "in particular a reminder that it is not associated in any way with the Free Software Foundation is needed."
Across the border in Austria someone has suggested a GNU/Linux distro for the EU. The 'Linux' petition is kind of interesting, an associate has told us, pointing to this page:
More can be found in this page which says stuff in support of "the implementation of an EU-Linux operating system in public administrations across all EU countries". To quote the outline:
The petitioner calls for the European Union to actively develop and implement a Linux-based operating system, termed ‘EU-Linux’, across public administrations in all EU Member States. This initiative aims to reduce dependency on Microsoft products, ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and promoting transparency, sustainability, and digital sovereignty within the EU. The petitioner emphasizes the importance of using open-source alternatives to Microsoft 365, such as LibreOffice and Nextcloud, and suggests the adoption of the E/OS mobile operating system for government devices. The petitioner also highlights the potential for job creation in the IT sector through this initiative.
In our experience, especially covering the EPO in an in-depth fashion for almost 11 years, the EU officials might be too corrupt to take this proposal seriously. But one can dream. The "lobbying" (bribery) budgets have probably been cut as debt balloons and company-wide layoffs soar in GAFAM due to a lack of money (a lot of the wealth is faked). █