Free Software Foundation History
Free Software Foundation is an uncommercial organization which was founded by Richard Stallman in 1985. The main object of founding of the given corporation consisted in the necessity of support of free software movement which favours the freedom of programmers and computer users to create modify and redistribute free software. The headquarters of the Free Software Foundation are situated in Massachusetts, USA.
Till the middle of 1990’s the basic aim of FSF was the hiring of software developers who had to create free software for the GNU Project. Since that time, the employees and volunteers of FSF were engaged in developing of legal and structural issues for this movement and community.
It should be noted that only free software is to be used on computers of Free Software Foundation.
November 25, 2002 the Free Software Foundation started a program of FSF Associate Membership for private individuals. March 5, 2003 FSF also ran a program Corporate Patron for profit organizations. For instance in April, 2004 the Foundation included 45 of corporate patrons.
The FSF disposes of copyrights on different indispensible pieces which belong to the GNU system, such as GNU Compiler Collection. Being the copyright holder, it is empowered to enforce the GNU General Public License in case there copyright infringement on software takes place. Beginning with 1991 till 2001, GPL enforcement was put into effect unofficially usually by Richard Stallman. In March 2003, SCO registered a claim against IBM, asserting that the contribution on the part of IBM infringed the rights of SCO. On the 5th of November, 2003 FSF received a subpoena to appear in court. FSF managed to refute its negative influence on the promotion of free software.
From 2003 to 2005, FSF organized legal seminars that aimed to clarify the GPL and the law. Most of these seminars were given by Bradley M. Kuhn and Daniel Ravicher. This was the fist measure taken to provide official legal education on the GPL.
In 1999, FSF received Linus Torvalds Award for free software. In 2005, FSF was honored with Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in the category “Digital Communities”.