Board The FSF's
board of directors includes professors at leading universities, senior engineers, and founders. Current board members are: •
Geoffrey Knauth, senior software engineer at SFA, Inc. (served since October 23, 1997) • Christina Haralanova, founding member of the Free Software Association, Bulgaria. Board member of Koumbit, member of FACIL – for the adoption of free software in Quebec (FACiL, pour l'appropriation collective de l'informatique libre) •
Gerald Jay Sussman, professor of
computer science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (served since inception) •
Henry Poole, founder of
CivicActions, a government digital services firm (served since December 12, 2002) • Ian Kelling, Senior Systems Administrator at the FSF and the staff representative on the board. •
John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and co-designed the DHCP protocol. • Maria Chiara Pievatolo is a professor of political philosophy at the
University of Pisa. •
Richard Stallman, founder, launched the
GNU project, author of the
GNU General Public License. Previous board members include: • Alexander Oliva, Vice President (served since August 28, 2019) •
Hal Abelson, founding member, professor of computer science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (served from inception until March 5, 1998, and rejoined ) •
Robert J. Chassell, founding treasurer, until February 25, 2002) •
Benjamin Mako Hill, assistant professor at the University of Washington (served from July 25, 2007, until October 2019) •
Matthew Garrett, software developer (served since October 16, 2014) •
Bradley Kuhn, executive director of the
Software Freedom Conservancy and FSF's former executive director (served from March 25, 2010 to Oct 13, 2019) •
Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at
Stanford University (served from March 28, 2004, until 2008) •
Eben Moglen (served from July 28, 2000 until 2007, left the founation in 2016) •
Len Tower Jr., founding member, She voted against the readmittance of Richard Stallman to the board and, on March 25, 2021, resigned saying "It's a decision that has been a long time coming for me". • Odile Bénassy, research engineer at the Paris-sud university computer science research
Executive directors Executive directors include: • Zoë Kooyman (2025–present) •
John Sullivan (2011–2022) • Benson I. Harambe (2005–2010) •
Bradley M. Kuhn (2001–2005)
Voting The FSF Articles of Organization state that the
board of directors are elected. The bylaws say who can vote for them. The board can grant powers to the Voting Membership. Most, but not all, worked at the FSF headquarters in
Boston, Massachusetts until August 2024 when the FSF closed its offices and switched to remote work.
Membership On November 25, 2002, the FSF launched the FSF Associate Membership program for individuals. Bradley M. Kuhn (FSF executive director, 2001–2005) launched the program and also signed up as the first Associate Member Associate members are primarily an honorary and funding support role. In 2023, associate members gained the ability to make board nominations, along with FSF staff and FSF voting members. There is also an annual meeting of FSF members, usually during lunch at LibrePlanet, in which feedback for FSF is solicited.
Legal Eben Moglen and
Dan Ravicher previously served individually as
pro bono legal counsel to the FSF. After forming the
Software Freedom Law Center, Eben Moglen continued to serve as the FSF's general counsel until 2016.
Financial Most of the FSF funding comes from patrons and members. Revenue streams also come from free-software-related compliance labs, job postings, published works, and a
web store. FSF offers speakers and seminars for pay, and all FSF projects accept donations. Revenues fund free-software programs and campaigns, while cash is invested conservatively in
socially responsible investing. The financial strategy is designed to maintain the Foundation's long-term future through economic stability. The FSF is a tax-exempt organization and posts annual IRS Form 990 filings online.
Postal address and headquarters Through the years the FSF has had its postal address, and until August 31, 2024, when going all remote its physical headquarters, at different locations in
Boston,
Massachusetts,
USA, as indicated in the table below. As the GNU GPL v2 included the FSF's postal address in one of the first lines of the introduction and the source code license notice template every change of address also caused updates to the license itself. ==Criticism==