FSF Has Finally Elected A New President

Written by Michael Larabel in Free Software on 5 August 2020 at 05:41 PM EDT. 44 Comments
FREE SOFTWARE
The Free Software Foundation has elected a new president following Richard Stallman's resignation last September from the FSF.

Stallman had served as the founding president of the Free Software Foundation since its inception in 1985 but stepped down last September following controversial comments.

The Free Software Foundation has elected Geoffrey Knauth as the new president. Knauth has been a FSF board member dating back to 1997. Knauth is a computer science professor in Pennsylvania and has contributed to the GNU Objective-C stack and other longtime involvement in the GNU and FSF.

The Free Software Foundation announced the new president today while also naming French free software promoter Odile BĂ©nassy to the board.

Knauth posted a statement as the new president. In there he commented, "The FSF Board chose me at this moment as a servant leader to help the community focus on our shared dedication to protect and grow software that respects our freedoms. It is also important to protect and grow the diverse membership of the community. It is through our diversity of backgrounds and opinions that we have creativity, perspective, intellectual strength, and rigor...It requires renewed focus to achieve our goals. We must remember what unites us and why we came to free software in the first place. What inspired us in the past? What will keep us inspired, and what will inspire new generations of free software developers? We must be kind to each other and respect each other when our good faith arguments differ, in order to produce the best solutions together. I pledge to support honest dialog and emerging leaders in the quest to secure the future for free software for generations to come, and not to alter the tenets of the free software vision."
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