Free Software Directory

Do you or the FSF still have a relationship with UNESCO?

Not anymore.

Why not? What changed or happened?

I don’t know for certain, but I heard a rumor that Bush made UNESCO drop its support for free software when the US rejoined UNESCO.

Bush has a long history of supporting Microsoft.

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The Free Software Directory is a project of the Free Software Foundation

Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to distribute and modify computer software without restriction....
 (FSF) and UNESCO. It catalogs useful free software

Free software

Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware...
 that runs under free operating system

Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
s - particularly GNU and Linux

Linux

Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
.

Unlike some other directories that focus on free software, Free Software Directory staff verify the licenses of software listed in the directory. As of March 21, 2007, the Directory lists 5,316 packages.

UNESCO

From an interview with Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman

Richard Matthew Stallman , often abbreviated "rms","'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman...
 :

Do you or the FSF still have a relationship with UNESCO?

Not anymore.

Why not? What changed or happened?

I don’t know for certain, but I heard a rumor that Bush made UNESCO drop its support for free software when the US rejoined UNESCO.

Bush has a long history of supporting Microsoft. For instance, he let Microsoft off the hook of its second US felony conviction, with an agreement that gave an appearance of restraining Microsoft, but in practical fact had no effect on it. I’ve heard that this was payback for campaign contributions.

This practice continues. The US Trade Representative has pressured some other governments to be Microsoft customers, and just recently the administration told various US agencies to support Microsoft’s bid to fast-track OOXML as an ISO standard.

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