Free Software Foundation
FSF

    (FSF) An organisation devoted to the creation and
   dissemination of free software, i.e. software that is free
   from licensing fees or restrictions on use.  The Foundation's
   main work is supporting the GNU project, started by Richard
   Stallman (RMS), partly to proselytise for his position that
   information is community property and all software source
   should be shared.

   The GNU project has developed the GNU Emacs editor and a C
   compiler, gcc, replacements for many Unix utilities and many
   other tools.  A complete Unix-like operating system (HURD)
   is in the works (April 1994).

   Software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General
   Public License, which also provides a good summary of the
   Foundation's goals and principles.  The Free Software
   Foundation raises most of its funds from distributing its
   software, although it is a charity rather than a company.
   Although the software is freely available (e.g. by FTP - see
   below) users are encouraged to support the work of the FSF by
   paying for their distribution service or by making donations.

   One of the slogans of the FSF is "Help stamp out software
   hoarding!"  This remains controversial because authors want to
   own, assign and sell the results of their labour.  However,
   many hackers who disagree with RMS have nevertheless
   cooperated to produce large amounts of high-quality software
   for free redistribution under the Free Software Foundation's
   imprimatur.

   See copyleft, General Public Virus, GNU archive site.

   <ftp://ftp.gnu.ai.mit.edu>.

   Unofficial WWW pages: <PDX>, <DeLorie>.

   E-mail: .

   Address: Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Massachusetts
   Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

   Telephone: +1 (617) 876 3296.

   (1995-12-10)