FSF announces new Executive Director

Boston, MA, USA - Monday, February 14, 2005 - The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the appointment of Peter T. Brown as its new Executive Director. Brown replaces Bradley Kuhn, who has become CTO of the newly created Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). In other FSF news, a GPL revision and an office re-location are planned. A major update has also been made to the FSF Website, which now has a portal based look and feel as well as a Blog section. (Full press release in article body.)

The appointment follows the departure of Bradley M. Kuhn, who is taking up the post of Chief Technology Officer at the newly created Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). Regarding his departure, Kuhn noted his desire to live in the New York City area and his interest in pursuing a technical role again.

Brown, who has worked at the FSF since 2001 and is currently the manager of the GPL Compliance Lab, and previously a Director of the alternative press magazine, New Internationalist, said, "I am very excited by this opportunity to work closely with FSF President, Richard Stallman, though I am sad to see Bradley leave the organization following such a successful tenure. The FSF faces an exciting year ahead as well as tough challenges. The additional legal resources being offered by the Software Freedom Law Center will give us an opportunity to expand on our GPL compliance efforts. We expect to work closely with the law center and the free software community as we work towards GPL version 3. We're also moving, in two senses, as we have just launched our new home page at www.fsf.org, and we'll be moving to new office premises in May, so expect an updated GPL version 2 with that new address."

Asked about the challenges ahead, Brown said, "Everyday it becomes more apparent that the growing success of Free Software threatens established proprietary software and media interests. These interests will continue to see our freedoms as threats, and we fully expect, and are preparing for, further challenges to our community."