Free Software Foundation: Anchoring the FSF in its values
Original by Free Software Foundation, see licence details at the bottom
We, the founders of the FSF, started the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985, with the moral goal of giving users control over their computing, what we call software freedom -- and specifically to support developing the GNU operating system that would make software freedom a practical possibility. The crucial first significant decision we five founders faced was how the new organization would be governed so as to protect its goal and principles.
An obvious option, used by many organizations, was to let supporters sign up as members and have the members' votes control everything about the organization.
We rejected that approach because it would have made the organization vulnerable to being taken over by people who disagreed with its mission. If a large fraction of the free software user community disagrees with us in a particular way, it would be no surprise if many of them joined the organization, with or without any particular plan, and then voted to change the mission. Governments must be democratic because they exercise broad power over people, but activist organizations should be steady in their mission.
Already in 1985, we could see that many of the people who appreciated the GNU Project's work (developing useful GNU software packages) did not support our goal and values. To look at software issues in terms of freedom was radical and many were reluctant to consider it, so they continued to evaluate programs based on practical convenience. If the FSF were member-governed, it would soon have hundreds of members who considered our goals and values unimportant and would vote to dispense with them -- if they could. To avoid that sad end, we had to design the organization not to be vulnerable to this danger.
So we chose a structure whereby the FSF's governing body would appoint new people to itself.
Our first idea was to make the board of directors function that way, but our lawyer said the board of directors had to be elected by "members." We decided to make the directors play also the role of members, by listing them also as voting members. Anyone elected to the board becomes a voting member. However, people who leave the board can remain voting members. In principle, the voting members are empowered to select new voting members at any meeting, but in practice we never do this; a person becomes a voting member by becoming a board member. Thus, the FSF voting members consist of all the present board members and some past board members. We have found that having some former board members remain as voting members helps stabilize the base of FSF governance.
The divergence between our values and those of most users was expressed differently after 1998, when the term "open source" was coined. It referred to a class of programs which were free/libre or pretty close, but it stood for the same old values of convenience and success, not the goal of freedom for the users of those programs. For them, "scratching your own itch" replaced liberating the community around us. People could become supporters of "open source" without any change in their ideas of right and wrong.
As the media incessantly labeled our work as "open source", many embraced "open source" thinking we endorsed it, even as the term gave them the wrong idea of what we stood for. We had to work hard to inform the public that we stood for something different from that. When people learned where we stood, some adopted our philosophy, but many stuck with "open source" since it did not question the values that society had taught them.
It would have been almost inevitable for supporters of "open source" to join the FSF, then vote to convert it into an "open source" organization, if its structure allowed such a course. Fortunately, we had made sure it did not. So we were able to continue spreading the idea that software freedom is a freedom that everyone needs and everyone is entitled to, just like freedom of speech.
In recent years, several influential "open source" organizations have come to be dominated by large companies. Large companies are accustomed to seeking indirect political power, and astroturf campaigns are one of their usual methods. It would be easy for companies to pay thousands of people to join the FSF if by doing so they could alter its goals and values. Once again, our defensive structure has protected us.
We believe that software freedom should be accepted as a human right, meaning that everyone is entitled to it in all areas of life. If people who would let that go for the sake of some other goals, valid though those may be, got control of the FSF board, someone would surely call on them to subordinate software freedom to unrelated goals. We must make sure that they not place their supporters on the FSF board.
A recent source of disagreement with the free software movement's philosophy comes from those who would like to make software licenses forbid the use of programs for various practices they consider harmful. Such license restrictions would not achieve the goal of ending those practices and each restriction would split the free software community. Use restrictions are inimical to the free software community; whatever we think of the practices they try to forbid, we must oppose making software licenses restrict them. Software developers should not have the power to control what jobs people do with their computers by attaching license restrictions. And when some acts that can be done by using computing call for systematic prohibition, we must not allow companies that offer software or online services to decide which ones. Such restrictions, when they are necessary, must be laws, adopted democratically by legislatures.
The free software movement rests on a basic human right that we didn't explicitly list because we thought that, in a free country, it went without saying: that people have a right to think about controversial issues (such as whether nonfree software should exist) and state their views (even controversial views such as "no, it should not exist"). Therefore, we respect and defend people's general right to dissent -- even to claim that nonfree software is legitimate, provided they don't falsely associate their views with the FSF or the FSF's work.
Nowadays, freedom to dissent is threatened, even in the United States. Various political causes advocate censorship of something or other, and some demand that all join in imposing that censorship. Adherents of such a cause might seek to impose its views on the FSF; we can no longer take for granted the right to profess dissenting views, even about software and freedom. The FSF's structure helps us stand firm for that right.
Nowadays, large political movements, business kingpins, and various governments run disinformation campaigns that can convince millions of people to believe almost anything -- even inconsistencies that change incompatibly from day to day. Such a campaign can direct its followers to impose its views on everyone. If those views are incompatible with free software, our structure must be our defense.
What new political disagreements will exist in the free software community ten, twenty or thirty years from now? People may try to disconnect the FSF from its values for reasons we have not anticipated, but we can be confident that our structure will give us a base for standing firm.
We recently asked our associate members to help us evaluate the current members of the FSF board of directors through a process that will help us preserve the basic structure that protects the FSF from pressure to change its values. A year ago we used this process to select new board members, and it worked very well.
Sincerely,
The Free Software Foundation Board of Directors █
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