The Fortieth Birthday of the FSF Made Us Extremely Happy
Photo: 'My daughter 40 years ago' by velka
A week after GNU had turned 42 (Mr. Oliva wrote about it shortly after he finally re-joined the Board of the FSF) we watched an emotional, very long ceremony... long planned and long organised by the FSF, bearing the slogan put forth by Mr. Oliva. His Libre-libre colleague, Mr. Self, wrote about this as well. Not too long earlier, in Portugal, many of these hackers met 'face to face' (in person) and Siddhesh Poyarekar then wrote a lengthy, personal post about it (we responded to it soon afterwards).
It feels like the 'hacker community' is regrouping to discuss things and prepare for the next Big Challenge. It looks like the FSF is growing and is finding suitable, articulate, trustworthy young men and women who will lead the FSF into the "next phase", adapting in the face of new challenges (such as mobile "stores" that deny "apps" they don't like and won't allow users to install anything not approved by them).
There's nobody in the FSF's staff or board that seems 'suspicious' in the sense that there's hostility towards the FSF's mission, roots, and founder. The ones that were (we'd rather not name them) are no longer there. The ceremony yesterday had a very homely, family-like atmosphere. █
