Peter Brown, the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, in his office at the organisation's headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. On the walls of his office are copies of the Free Software Foundation's artwork, including the famous GNU head, which was designed by Etienne Suvasa.
The front cover of the final issue of Sinclair Programs magazine, which was published in September 1985. This magazine included listings of computer programs which users could run by typing the appropriate code into their ZX-80 or ZX-81.
Peter Brown managed to get a program published in this issue of the magazine, and was gutted when he found out it was being scrapped and that he could no longer share his code with others. Although he did not start working with the Free Software Foundation for another 15 years, this was the first time he became aware of his freedom being restricted.
"Looking back at it now, overnight my world was destroyed, because the listing magazine was destroyed. It just became about playing code, rather than writing code," he said. "That was the last time I ever did any programming."
The above image and PDFs were provided by Peter Brown.
Joshua Ginsberg, a senior systems administrator for the FSF, is one of the two full-time system administrators employed by the organisation.
John Sullivan, who works as a programme administrator for the FSF. His responsibilities include maintaining the FSF Web site and resources concerning the next version of the GPL.
The main room in the FSF office. Seated at the desk on the left is Niibe Yutaka, the chairman of the Free Software Initiative Japan, who was visiting the FSF during our visit.
The FSF has a number of sister organisations, including FSF Europe, FSF India, Free Software Initiative Japan and FSF Latin America. These organisations are generally self-funded and independently run.
"We want to have separate organisations with control over their own destiny," says Brown.
A glass partition within the office building is printed with the first two sentences of the GPL: "The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public Licenses are intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software — to make sure the software is free for all its users."
A stuffed Tux (the mascot of the Linux kernel) takes pride of place on a filing cabinet in the FSF office. Despite the different motivations of the free software and open source movements and a long-running disagreement over whether the operating system should be named GNU/Linux or Linux, Brown says the FSF has no issues with Linus Torvalds or the kernel project.
"There is a huge difference [between the free software and open source movements], but it is the difference between like-minded people," said Brown. "The key difference is that, if tomorrow Microsoft made its software work for a change, offered it for free and gave you access to the source code, would these people stop supporting free software?"
"The problem with the message of open source is that it doesn't ensure the type of protection we need. We've got a world in which we are being challenged by things like software patents and DRM. Unless you care about freedom, you will probably not care about these issues. We care about freedom so we really care about DRM," Brown added.
Copyright © 1995-2009 CBS Interactive Limited. All rights reserved
ZDNET is a registered service mark of CBS Interactive Limited. ZDNET Logo is a service mark of CBS Interactive Limited.