The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has selected John Gilmore,Christina Haralanova, and Maria Chiara Pievatolo to become FSF boardmembers starting June 23, 2024. This exceptional development of addingthreenew members to the FSF's board of directors is the result ofreviewing eighty-three nominations, having ten candidates in forumdiscussions with FSF associate members, conducting months ofconversations between current board members and all candidates, andreviewing input from FSF staff and supporters. After that, a threemonth provisional board member period started on March 23, 2024.
"Our carefully designed board process delivered three highly qualifiedboard members," says FSF president Geoffrey Knauth, "we investedfourteen months of effort intothe processand this firstiteration, and we're excited to get to work with these exceptional anddedicated free software advocates."
The FSF designed a transparent, community supported process toidentify and evaluate new board members.The processinvolveddetailed discussions with the FSF's global associate members. "The FSFhas made a major step towards establishing a solid governancestructure that sets us up for a strong future in which we can respondto software freedom threats ahead of us," Knauth said.
The FSF is an unwavering defender of software freedom and what thatmeans. This is a role the new board members appreciate deeply. "FSF'smoral stance for the freedom of individual software users remains keyto keeping the free software movement effective in the 2020s andbeyond," as newly appointed board member John Gilmore explains. "Thismoral grounding provides a foundation for writing and evolving legaldocuments such as the GNU General Public License, and for makingdecisions on how to keep it effective as the world evolves. Inaddition, FSF stewards many key pieces of software used by millions ofpeople and companies worldwide," he continued.
"FSF has a vital role in protecting software freedom," statesnewly appointed board member Christina Haralanova. "We, as members of thecommunity and board members, have the ethical duty to support freesoftware, no matter the circumstances. Software freedom is, however,the struggle of many more communities than we can imagine. Whileaccompanying and training rights-protecting activists, includingfeminists, environmentalists, human rights defenders, librarians, andjournalists, I have found a deep understanding and support fortechnical activism along with their core activism. We at FSF need toreach those supporters in a way that makes it easier for them toadopt, adapt, and diffuse the concepts of freedom among their peers."
Biographies
John Gilmore (US)
John Gilmore is a philanthropist, computer engineer, entrepreneur, civillibertarian, and nonprofit board member. He is a pioneer with thirty years ofexperience in the computer industry, including applications programming,systems programming, language implementation, management, andinvestment. He was the fifth employee at Sun Microsystems, cofounder ofthe Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a cypherpunk privacy activist.He co-designed the DHCP protocol that your phone or laptop uses daily to getits Internet address. He also contributed decades and more than $12million to improving United States drug laws. Gilmore has served as amember of many nonprofit and for-profit boards for four decades.
He cofoundedCygnus Support, the successfulcommercial free software company that polished and supportedGCC,Binutils, and GDB; and invested tens of millions of revenue dollars intoengineers improving GNU tools. Gilmore also wrote, maintained, orimproved many free software programs. He wrote the program that becameGNU Tar, was theGDBmaintainer for years, improved theGNU Binutilsand theGNU manuals, and catalyzed and funded GNURadioandGnash.
Christina Haralanova (BG / CA)
Christina is an academic researcher, free software activist, technicaltrainer, and university lecturer. She has been an active free softwaresupporter since 2000, helping over 30 women's rights-defendingorganizations and community centers understand the importance ofsoftware freedom and migrate to free software. Founding member of theFree Software Association, Bulgaria, and later Board member ofKoumbit, member of FACIL – for the adoption of free software in Quebec(FACiL, pour l'appropriation collective de l'informatique libre,), Christina has been working in the intersection oftechnology, feminism, and social justice. Christina's Master's thesisanalyzes women's contribution to free software development(2010). Her Ph.D. thesis discovered how to transform hacking spaces tobecome more accessible, diverse, and pedagogically engaging diverse,andaccessible to everyone (2019). In her current practice,Christina is exploring ways to help Canadian community organizationscreate strategic and sustainable technological practices in theirdaily usage.
Maria Chiara Pievatolo (IT)
Maria Chiara Pievatolo is a professor of political philosophy at theuniversity of Pisa, Italy. She is one of the earliest Italianproponents and practitioners of open (as in "free") scholarlyprinciples. She founded one of the oldest Italian Open Access journalsin the humanities and social sciences, the "Bollettino telematico difilosofia politica." Chiara is also a founding member of the ItalianAssociation for the promotion of Open Science (AISA), of which she iscurrently president."Openness" of sciencerefers to the freedomof knowledge commons from obstacles due to monopolies and secrecy,bureaucratic evaluation obligations, or academic hierarchy. Inspiredby the philosophy of GPL, free software, and copyleft she isinterested in alternative non-monopolistic forms of copyright (such asKant's), and thus that are capable of taking seriously the interest ofthe public use of reason and the knowledge commons.
Moving forward
These three new members of the FSF's board of directors are the firstto be appointed since 2020, when Odile Bénassy joined. Given theimportance of the FSF to the free software movement, and theimportance of its board to ensure preservation of the software freedomdefinition, the board has not taken its task lightly. Next, the FSFwill evaluate current board members with the FSF's associate membersin August, after which the voting members will review the feedbackreceived and decide if each current board member should remain. Formore information on the FSF's board process, please refer to boardprocess graph.
Maria Chiara Pievatolo speaks to the importance of sustaining theFSF's unique mission: "The first best thing would have been to modifycopyright law to protect authors and the public instead ofintellectual monopolies. But doing it by hacking copyright for fun andfreedom, against corporate-captured lawmakers, was - and is -certainly the second best. The FSF needs our support."
The board thanks the FSF's many supporters and associate members fortheir valuable input and dedication to the organization while we workthrough this process. The board could not do its work in leading thecentral organization in the free software movement without the inputof its supporters. To become an FSF associate member and contribute tothis process, as well as support the Foundation as a whole and enjoy awide range ofmember benefits, you can sign uphere.
