FSF's High Priority Project List Now Has A Committee

Written by Michael Larabel in GNU on 19 December 2014 at 12:05 AM EST. 12 Comments
GNU
The Free Software Foundation has now built up a committee to review their "High Priority Projects" list and they're looking for more feedback from the community.

Nearly ten years ago is when the Free Software Foundation began listing what they viewed as the High Priority Free Software Projects in a list. This list has over time contained some definite high-priority projects related to freeing Java and Adobe PDF support and open graphics drivers to some more obscure projects of high priority like a free version of Oracle Forms, a replacement to OpenDWG libraries for CAD files, automatic transcription software, etc. I've personally called out many of the FSF HPP for what they're worth with my thoughts over the years.

Besides it being hard to comprehend why some projects are defined as "high priority", even for what has been deemed high priority, many of the projects see little new activity and go stagnate while flying on the FSF HPP list. At times over the years, it seemed like some of it was a waste.

Thus I'm very happy to hear that they're now looking for more community feedback and are establishing a committee to review the HPPs. The announcement of these changes was announced at FSF.org earlier this month (8 December) while I just heard of it tonight when the FSF's media contact let me know about Phoronix being linked from the announcement (via "criticism").

Initial committee members to review the FSF High Priority Projects list include Ginger Coons, Máirín Duffy, Matthew Garrett, Benjamin Mako Hill, Mike Linksvayer, Lydia Pintscher, Karen Sandler, Seth Schoen, and Stefano Zacchiroli. This committee is looking for feedback from YOU about projects for the list, etc. The committee hopes to have out a new HPP list before LibrePlanet 2015, which is taking place at the end of March. Hit up the FSF.org announcement for details on how to share your opinions with the committee for free software projects you view as of high importance.
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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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