Free Software Foundation is planning an anniversary year for its 40th birthday

The Free Software Foundation turns forty on October 4, 2025 “and we’re ending our thirties on a high!” they announced this week:

We wish we were celebrating the achievement of software freedom for all computer users, but we’re not there yet. Until our mission becomes a reality and we can retire, we will instead celebrate forty years of activism and all we have accomplished.

Since our founding in 1985, we’ve set many stepping stones on the road to software freedom, and we’re eager to continue building the road ahead. We’ll celebrate our fortieth anniversary in the spirit of bringing the international free software community together, discuss what we can do next to make the world freer, and celebrate how far we’ve come. We strive for a free planet! Sound familiar? Instead of hosting one LibrePlanet conference in 2025, we are planning a jam-packed anniversary year, filled with several new and exciting activities!

We’ll kick off the anniversary year with an unprecedented memorabilia auction, starting as a silent auction on March 17 and culminating in a virtual live auction on March 23. Leaving the FSF office, we were allowed to see all the fun and historically important memorabilia and selected the best. This is your chance to get your own personal souvenir of the FSF, from original GNU art to a famous katana and the same VT220 that sat at the FSF reception and used to display ASCII art or play free software. games.

Let’s claim the month of May as libre planet (or libre local) month! We invite free software supporters like you, anywhere in the world, to organize a personal community meeting near you to bring people together. We are setting up a small fund for these local meetings, can send stickers, flyers, ideas and tips, And You can invite an FSF employee to give a lecture or workshop during your event And Of course we help promote…

Then, on the actual anniversary of the FSF on October 4, 2025, there will be a big celebration in Boston, MA, and the entire free software community is invited… These are just some of the big points we’ve covered, but there’s more! Keep an eye on the FSF pages, we will post exact information about everything that will happen.
They are looking for volunteers – and they also suggest organizing a community meeting near you. In addition, there is also an FSF anniversary logo competition. “We’d like to source the 40th anniversary logo design directly from a free software contributor. Anyone is welcome to submit a design (or even multiple designs), regardless of your previous design experience.”

The winning design “will be chosen by the community and ultimately immortalized in FSF history,” according to the announcement – ​​displayed on the FSF homepage, printed on all party materials, “and possibly even stamped on some merchandise.” But the demands of the competition obviously include respecting everyone’s freedoms:

– The logo must be produced exclusively using free software editing tools, such as GIMP, Krita or Inkscape;

– All fonts used in the design must be under the SIL Open Font License or other free license…

“The final logo will be released under CC BY, attributed to the FSF.”