Become a Member

Become a member of the Free Software Foundation today to help us reach our goal of $450,000 by January 31st.

Quoted from: Build us up! Free software is a cornerstone of a free society

You guessed it. We're not talking about Santa. The NSA and the world's big Internet and telecommunications companies have built a massive Surveillance Industrial Complex that undermines all our freedoms. We need to build our own infrastructure, one that values freedom, privacy, and security for all people. We need your help to do it.

The Free Software Foundation has been defending computer users' freedoms and privacy for nearly thirty years. No matter the political climate, we have always fought to defend the freedoms of all computer users. Today, in the face of mass surveillance, more people than ever are discovering that free software is a necessary cornerstone of a free society. With this momentum, we can turn our blueprints for a free software future into brick and mortar.

Since day one of the PRISM scandal, the FSF has been sounding the alarm. We've published high-profile op-eds in Wired and Slate, and as members of the Stop Watching Us coalition we marched on Washington to protest mass surveillance. And we're not just talking about the need for change; we're doing something about it. This September, we hosted a hackathon in honor of the GNU System's 30th anniversary, where participants made contributions to a dozen projects that form key building blocks of a surveillance-free future.

All the while, we've continued to build towards many more of the prerequisites for a free society, from working with hardware manufacturers to fighting DRM in HTML5.

With your support, we can do so much more in 2014.

The Free Software Foundation is only as powerful as our membership base; individual donations account for the majority of our funding each year. This has always been a grassroots, community-supported movement, and it always will be. This year, we need to meet our goal of $450,000 to build our vision for the free software movement. You can become a member of the FSF for just $10/month ($5/month for students); when you join, you'll get a variety of benefits, including free admission to our annual conference, LibrePlanet.

Please consider joining as a member to help us meet our fundraising goal by January 31st.

Every dollar you give helps to build us up.

If you believe in our work, please share this appeal with your social networks.

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The FSF's campaigns

The FSF's campaigns target important opportunities for free software adoption and development, empower people against specific threats to their freedom, and move us closer to a free society.

Our successes are driven by the efforts of supporters and activists like you all around the world. Please take a moment today to make a contribution, by joining the FSF as an associate member, making a tax-deductible donation and volunteering your time.

Free JavaScript

The Free JavaScript campaign is an ongoing effort to persuade organizations to make their Web sites work without requiring that users run any nonfree software. By convincing influential sites to make the transition, we raise awareness of the need for free software-friendly Web sites and influence the owners of other sites to follow.

Stop DRM in HTML5

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is considering a proposal to weave Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) into HTML5 — in other words, into the very fabric of the Web. Millions of Internet users came together to defeat SOPA/PIPA, but now Big Media moguls are going through non-governmental channels to try to sneak digital restrictions into every interaction we have online. Giants like Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and the BBC are all rallying behind this disastrous proposal, which flies in the face of the W3C's mission to "lead the World Wide Web to its full potential."

Please sign our petition to stop DRM in HTML5.

Secure Boot vs Restricted Boot

Upgrade from Windows 8

Microsoft has shelled out a mind-boggling estimated $1.8* billion to convince the public that it needs Windows 8. Why the record-breaking marketing deluge? Because a slick ad campaign is Microsoft's best shot at hiding what Windows 8 really is; a faulty product that restricts your freedom, invades your privacy, and controls your data.

Windows 8 comes with plenty of "features" Microsoft won't tell you about. Because Windows 8 is proprietary software, you can't modify Windows 8 or see how it is built, which means Microsoft can use its operating system to exploit users and benefit special interests. Windows 8 also includes software that inspects the contents of your hard drive, and Microsoft claims the right to do this without warning. To make matters worse, Windows 8 also has a contacts cache that experts fear may store sensitive personal data and make users vulnerable to identity theft.

Learn more about our campaign and pledge to upgrade away from Windows at http://www.upgradefromwindows8.com

Surveillance

If we want to defang surveillance programs like PRISM, we need to stop using centralized systems and come together to build an Internet that's decentralized, trustworthy, and free "as in freedom." The good news is that the seeds of such a network are already out there; as we wrote in our statement on PRISM, ethical developers have been working for years on free software social media, communication, publishing, and more.

Check out the surveillance campaign area to get involved with the effort to make the Web safer and from surveillance. There's something to do for people of all experience levels.

Working together for free software

Free software is simply software that respects our freedom — our freedom to learn and understand the software we are using. Free software is designed to free the user from restrictions put in place by proprietary software, and so using free software lets you join a global community of people who are making the political and ethical choice assertion of our rights to learn and to share what we learn with others.

This is a campaign aimed at getting new users into free software.

The GNU Operating System

The GNU operating system is a complete operating system made entirely of free software. Millions of people are using GNU every day to edit their documents, browse the web, play games, and handle their email, or as part of a GNU/Linux system on their home computer. Even people who have never heard of it use GNU everyday, because it powers many of the sites they visit and services they use. Learn more about GNU, and support progress on fully free operating systems by volunteering or donating to the FSF.

DefectiveByDesign.org

Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) robs us of control over the technology we use and the culture we live in. DRM and the DMCA can make it illegal to share an article, back-up your kids' favorite DVD, or move your music from one player to another. Since DRM is inherently incompatible with free software, it also excludes free software users from equal participation in culture. DefectiveByDesign.org is our anti-DRM campaign, where we mobilize large vocal communities to reject products from businesses that insist on using to DRM to control their customers. Learn more at DefectiveByDesign.org and the campaign wiki.

PlayOgg

The PlayOgg campaign (playogg.org) promotes the use of free audio and video formats unencumbered by patent restrictions, rather than MP3, QuickTime, Windows Media, and AAC, whose patent problems threaten free software and hinder progress. We also promote the use of the new "video tag" standard as an alternative to Adobe Flash for embedding audio and video in webpages. Find out more about PlayOgg at playogg.org or at the campaign wiki. You can also join the PlayOgg volunteer team to push companies and services to use Ogg by joining the mailing list.

End Software Patents

Software patents create a legal nightmare for all software developers and pose particular problems for the free software movement. So as the FSF campaigns for formats that are free of software patents, we also work on the more fundamental task of ending software patents entirely, through legal and legislative action. Learn more at EndSoftPatents.org, see the wiki, join the action alert mailing list.

Campaign for OpenDocument

Our OpenDocument campaign fights for the use of free formats in government documents, pushing governments to adopt policies requiring that all digital public documents and information be stored and distributed in formats that are standard, open, and royalty-free. OpenDocument Format (ODF) is one such format. Get involved and take action against Microsoft's Open XML.

High Priority Free Software Projects

The FSF's High Priority Projects list and reverse engineering projects list serve to foster the development of projects that are important for increasing the adoption and use of free software and free software operating systems. Some of the most important projects on our list are "replacement projects". These projects are important because they address areas where users are continually seduced into using nonfree software by the lack of an adequate free replacement. These are critical projects that need your help.

LibrePlanet

The FSF is just one part of a massive global movement for free software. Recognizing this, the FSF created LibrePlanet (libreplanet.org), a wiki and community site to help free software users, developers and activists around the world connect and share information and resources. Visit LibrePlanet to create a profile, add your organization, or list your activist project. You can also join the mailing list, the IRC channel, or the identi.ca group.

Campaign for Hardware that Supports Free Software

Hardware manufacturers are often negligent in offering support for free software. Our hardware directory helps people identify hardware to buy that works with their free software operating system. It is also an important part of the FSF's ongoing work to persuade hardware vendors to respect free software users. For more information on the FSF's plans, read our whitepaper: The road to hardware free from restriction, or see its most recent revisions on its LibrePlanet wiki page.

Free BIOS Campaign

Our campaign for a Free BIOS protects your rights by giving you freedom at the lowest level (if the BIOS is not free, manufacturers can use it to interfere with your control over the computer you use, for example). One piece of this campaign is Coreboot, a free software project aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS (firmware) you can find in most of today's computers. Visit coreboot.org to learn more about the development of Coreboot, supported systems, and how you can get started running a free BIOS. For more, join the Coreboot mailing list. The FSF is also pushing for the creation of a laptop with a free BIOS.

Campaign against the ACTA

The FSF opposes the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) because it is a threat to the distribution and development of free software, and we campaign against this and other international agreements that undermine people's right to control technology. Learn more about our campaign against the ACTA.

The FSF welcomes volunteers in all of its campaigns. You can keep up with the most important happenings in our campaigns by following our news feed, blogs feed, and the #fsf IRC channel.