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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 5^th 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”.

Richard Stallman (born March, 16 1953, New York City) is a world famous programmer. He is the author of such programs as GNU Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, and GNU Debugger. Stallman is also considered the founder of free software, GNU project, Free Software Foundation and League for Programming Freedom.

During his years of studies at Harvard University, Richard Stallman worked as a programmer at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. After graduating from Harvard University, Stallman became a student at MIT. Soon he refused from his plans to continue his scientific education. In 1984 Stallman gave up working at the Laboratory, to set to work on GNU project, which was founded by him in September, 1983. Beginning with the middle of 1990’s, Richard Stallman developed less software, as he devoted his time to the developing of free software concepts.

Stallman is the author of a great number of essays written on software freedom. He has regularly made speeches which are entitled “The GNU project and the Free Software Movement”, “The Dangers of Software Patents”, and “Copyright and Community in the age of Computer Networks”. In 1999 Stallman suggested developing a free on-line encyclopedia, by inviting people to contribute articles.

Over the time of many years, Richard Stallman has supported the exactness of his terminology. Stallman does not accept the term “open source software” because it does not render the value of the software such as freedom. He asks people to use the term “free software”, because of the freedom issues of this software. He also affirms that one has to say “proprietary software” instead of “closed source software”, in the event if, the software can not be distributed, used or modified freely. It is noteworthy that Richard Stallman takes the terminology most seriously. For instance, he agrees to give interview only to those journalists who will use his terminology in the article.