Help our messages stay out of spam boxes: adding info-at-fsf.org to your address book lets most email providers know that this is not spam.

Read and share online: https://www.fsf.org/appeal?pk_campaign=fr_sp2019&pk_source=email2

Dear Ruben Safir,

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the wider free software
movement are now bigger in important ways than we've ever been
before. We have more associate members, more staff working full time
to protect your freedom, more volunteers, more software development
infrastructure -- and more things to do.

Being primarily funded by thousands of individuals gives us strength
and independence. We face financial requirements from the mundane and
concrete, such as significantly increased server colocation expenses
for the free infrastructure that supports hundreds of thousands of
developers, to the aspirational and ideological, like the pressing
need to refine and propagate our ethical standards and accompanying
licensing expectations for network services. For this, we ask your
support.

Thanks to the conviction and generous contributions of the free
software community, we have built an efficient and effective global
network, bringing people together to resist the constant threats to
our freedom in the form of proprietary software seeking to subjugate
us and our societies to crass commercial ends. We are proud of what
we've accomplished together, but our work is not done.

In spite of the very public series of aggressive acts by the world's
most well-known tech companies -- especially Facebook, Amazon,
Google, Apple, and Microsoft -- we don't have global critical mass
clamoring for free "as in freedom" software and ethical network
services. Instead, pundits are focused on breaking up some of the
companies, which, while possibly warranted for other reasons, won't
fix the immoral power imbalance at the root of the privacy failures
and other problems on everyone's minds.

Every day, we see that the real resistance is growing, but it may not
be growing fast enough. As more people are casting about for ways to
escape the digital horrors they read about, the FSF needs to be there
with outstretched hands: making free software philosophy relatable;
supporting ethical development of the software, hardware, and services
they need; and helping them find and flex their political strength.

Already, our exceptionally generous community got us to where we are,
in a position to succeed if we keep at it. Our spring fundraiser
is nearly coming to an end, with only one week left, please consider a
financial contribution to our cause. With your donation added
before July 15th, you would help us to achieve our goal of 400
donations in 28 days.

Our fourteen hardworking staff use your donations wisely, earning
yet another best possible rating of four stars from Charity Navigator
this last year. You can read our financial statements, and our
annual reports online.

We have now published our spring Bulletin online. We hope you
enjoy reading about some of the great work we've done in collaboration
with the global free software community. I'm especially excited about
the lead article explaining the pilot program we just finished
teaching free software in Boston-area public elementary schools, which
we'd love to expand into a model usable around the world.

Please be vocal about your support for free software! When you're done
reading, take a moment to share your passion for free software by
posting your favorite article on your social media or blog using
the #ISupportFreeSoftware hashtag, and use its contents as a
conversation starter within your community to talk about why you
support free software.

Individual financial contributions and spreading the word like this
are forms of activism we need much more of if we're to overcome
trillions of proprietary software dollars. We need to grow and
diversify if we're to make respect for user freedom the default,
rather than a constantly endangered niche. We've shown that with your
support we can succeed together against far greater resources -- thank
you for sticking with us and giving everything you can to bring about
a brighter future.

Yours in freedom,

John Sullivan

Executive Director