Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/03/26/libreplanet.html

Seven and a half years ago, I got this idea: the membership of the
Free Software Foundation should have a
chance to get together every year and learn about what the FSF has been
doing for the last year. I was so nervous
at the
first one on Saturday 15 March 2003, that
I even
wore a suit which I rarely do.

The basic idea was simple: the FSF Board of Directors came into town
anyway each March for the annual board meeting. Why not give a chance
for FSF associate members to meet the leadership and staff of FSF and
ask hard questions to their hearts’ content? I’m all about
transparency, as you know. 🙂

Since leaving
the position of Executive Director a few months before the 2005
meeting, I’ve attended every annual meeting, just as an ordinary
Associate Member and
FSF volunteer. It’s always enjoyable to attend a conference organized
by someone else that you used to help organize; it’s like, after having
done sysadmin work for other people for years, to have someone keep a
machine running and up to date just for you. It’s been wonderful to
watch the FSF AM meeting grow into a full-fledged conference for
discussion and collaboration between folks from all over the Free
Software world. “One room, one track, one day” has become
“five rooms, three tracks, and three days” with the
proverbial complaint throughout: But, why do I have to miss this
great session so that I can go to some other great session!?!

Some highlights for me this year were:

• I saw John
  Gilmore win
  a well-deserved FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software.
• I got to spend time with the
  intrepid gnash
  developer Rob Savoye
  again, whom I knew of for years (his legend precedes him) but
  I’d rarely had a chance to see in person regularly, until lately.
• I met so many young people excited about software freedom. I can only
  imagine to be only 19 or 20 years old and have the opportunity meet
  other Free Software developers in person. At that age, I considered
  myself lucky to simply have Usenet access so that I could follow and
  participate in online discussions about Free Software (good ol’
  gnu.misc.discuss ;). I am so glad that young folks, some from as far
  away as Brazil, had the opportunity to visit and speak about their
  work.
• On the informal Friday sessions, I was a bit amazed that I pulled off
  a marathon six-hour session of mostly well-received talks/discussions
  (for which I readily admit I had not prepped well). The first three
  hours was about the challenges of software freedom on mobile devices,
  and the second three were about the nitty-gritty details of the hardest
  and most technical GPL enforcement task: the C&CS check. People
  seemed to actually enjoy watching me break half my Fedora chroots trying
  to build some source code for a plasma television. Someone even told me
  later: it was more fun because we got to see you make all the
  mistakes.
• Finally (and I realize I’ve probably buried the lede here, but I’ve
  kept the list chronological, since I wrote most of it before I found out
  this last thing), after the FSF Board meeting, which followed
  LibrePlanet, I was informed by a phone call from my good
  friend Henry Poole
  that I’d been elected to
  FSF’s Board of
  Directors, which has now
  been announced
  by FSF on Peter Brown’s blog. I’ve often told the story that when I
  first learned about the FSF as a young programmer and sysadmin, I
  thought that someday, maybe I could be good enough to get a job as a
  sysadmin for the FSF. I did indeed volunteer as a sysadmin for the FSF
  starting around 1996, but I truly felt I’d exceeded any possible dream
  when I was later named FSF’s Executive Director, and was able to serve
  in that post for so many years. Now, being part of the Board of
  Directors is an even greater opportunity for involvement in the
  organization that I’ve loved and respected for so long.

FSF is an organization based around a very simple, principled idea:
that users and programmers alike deserve inalienable rights to copy,
share, modify, and redistribute all the software that they use. This
issue isn’t merely about making better software (although Free Software
developers usually do, anyway); it’s about a principle of morality:
everyone using computers should be treated well and be given the maximal
opportunity to treat their neighbors well, too. Helping make this
simple idea into reality is the center of all the work I’ve done for the
last 12 years of my life, and I expect it will be the focus of my
(hopefully many) remaining years. I am thankful that the Voting Members
of FSF have given me this additional opportunity to help our shared
cause. I plan to work hard in this and all the other responsibilities
that I already have to our Free Software community. Like everyone on
FSF’s Board of Directors, I serve in that role completely as a
volunteer, so in some ways I feel this is just a natural extension of
the volunteer work I’ve continued to do for the FSF regularly since I
left its employment in 2005.

Finally, I was glad to meet (or meet again) so many FSF supporters at
LibrePlanet, and I deeply hope that I can serve our shared goal well in
this additional role.