# The Free Software Foundation is dying

<https://drewdevault.com/2023/04/11/2023-04-11-The-FSF-is-dying.html>

- Host: [drewdevault.com](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/drewdevault.com/)
- Saved: April 17, 2023 (2023-04-18T03:21:56Z)
- Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/40248b4d2867/
- JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/40248b4d2867.json

## What Jamie wrote

"We", all of us using the Internet and reading an email on it, owe a big debt of gratitude to the work of the Free Software Foundation. The mission that it took on, and the literal software that it helped create and maintain, has been critical to the Internet and computing for decades.

Sadly though I completely agree with DeVault's commentary here. 

> In its role as the thought-leaders of free software philosophy, the message of the FSF has a narrow reach. The organization’s messaging is tone-deaf, ineffective, and myopic. Hammering on about “GNU/Linux” nomenclature, antagonism towards our allies in the open source movement, maligning the audience as “useds” rather than “users”; none of this aids the cause. The pages and pages of dense philosophical essays and poorly organized FAQs do not provide a useful entry point or reference for the community. The message cannot spread like this.

The FSF has become irrelevant, fighting last decades battles and worrying about attribution. The leadership of the FSF has missed all the critical movements in open source for a long time.

The trouble is, does it matter? Maybe the FSF ran its course and should just go away?

## Facts

- Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/)

## Appears in

- [WT251: Weekly Thing #251 / Moloch, Chess, Protocol](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/251/), Notable

## Same host

- [My personal journey from MIT to GPL | Drew DeVault’s Blog](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/6e07cf5dcc34/) (drewdevault.com, June 17, 2019)

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- [Reddit Moderators Brace for a ChatGPT Spam Apocalypse](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/27b31584165f/) (vice.com, April 17, 2023)

## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://drewdevault.com/2023/04/11/2023-04-11-The-FSF-is-dying.html