Funds for freedom

My main interest in computing lies with software. I don't have a very good relationship with hardware: it breaks easily, it's hard to fix, it's even harder to create, it's noisy or otherwise unergonomical, it takes up space and gathers dust and it's hard to find exactly what you want. That last annoyance is mostly caused by manufacturers and shops not giving detailed specifications of their products and changing them without letting the customer know. A Free software user can count himself lucky if the shopkeeper lets him test with a live CD of a Free operating system. But that's impracticle or impossible for some hardware, e.g. routers. That's why I'm happy that the FSF is maintaining a hardware list. There's also a more informal hardware list at LibrePlanet. Both are incomplete, so please test your hardware and report whether it works or not.

Another big focus of the FSF on the hardware side is the Lemote Yeeloong. Ever since (and even before) Mark Shuttleworth's suggestion of a free-software-only laptop I had been trying to find such a mythical machine. It was finally realised (almost completely) in the form of the Yeeloong. The FSF have been cooperating with Lemote since before it was officially available and are doing so still. They bought a small pile of them and have been lending them to developers who wanted to work on software running on it. I bought one myself because I'm not working on any low level stuff, because I wanted to reward the company for supporting Free software and because it's just cool to have this milestone in hardware development. Since its release the FSF and Lemote have been working with the gNewSense team to create a Free operating system for the Yeeloong. Richard Stallman and others (including myself) have been using it for many months now. There are also efforts going on to free the embedded controller, one of the few non-free components. Moreover, the FSF are providing feedback to Lemote about the hardware to help improve future versions of the Yeeloong (and possibly other hardware).

So that's already a very good reason to support the Free Software Foundation, even if you don't own a Yeeloong yourself (yet). If you think that's not enough, here are some more reasons:

• They provide hardware and do sysadmin work for gNewSense and many other Free software projects.
• Their campaign against Digital Restrictions Management.
• Their campaign against software patents.
• They educate about the Free software philosophy and publish it freely.
• They give licensing advice, which the gNewSense team has thankfully made use of.
• They protect Free software, as the copyright holder of all GNU software (and then some) and by creating and maintaining the GPL.
• The PlayOgg campaign.
• They have funded early work on the GNU operating system and continue their involvment with it.
• They maintain the Free Software Directory.
• And I'm sure there's more I haven't mentioned yet. Visit the FSF website, especially the campaigns section for more details.

If you become a member, the FSF will put your 120 USD to good use. If that's a bit much for you then you can also give less, but you'll have to miss out on the cool bootable membership card. However, the best way to support Free software is still to educate people about it, because that's also the Free Software Foundation's main goal. If you do decide to become a member, please click the image below. That will put me on this list of cool people.