Volunteer for the FSF and GNU
by
Free Software Foundation
Contributions
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Published on
Mar 22, 2006 03:10 PM
Volunteers are key to the success
of projects organized by the Free Software Foundation and the GNU
Project. An important part of our role at the FSF is
coordination of volunteers. People write to us to say they want to help, and we connect them with tasks that need to be done, projects that need contributors, and ideas that could be developed.
Read this page in Spanish.
We also collect the ideas that people send to us for new projects, resources, and campaigns. Send your ideas to us at [email protected] and we will consider integrating it with this list.
![Volunteers and staff at the LibrePlanet 2009 conference](https://static.fsf.org/fsforg/img/lp2009/thumb_FSFunconf-04.jpg)
Additionally, we offer unpaid internship positions throughout the year. Read more about how to apply for FSF internships.
Are you an activist, or an organizer?
- Join the FSF community team!
- Join our campaigns and take direct action now, head over to our campaigns center.
- Connect your free software user group with the FSF. Write to us at [email protected].
- Attend local free software events and government hearings. We post these events either at https://www.fsf.org/news, or at https://www.fsf.org/events and share them with the Free Software Supporters mailing list. Write to us at [email protected] if you see an event you'd like to attend on behalf of the FSF.
- Organize in your state, region or
country, and connect to other free software activists at https://libreplanet.org. Get started by listing your free software activism group. Help us plan and have a presence at
events you organize. Write to us at [email protected] for materials.
- Organize member events on behalf of the FSF, either independently or in connection with an existing event. We will be happy to recommend speakers and provide materials and some helpful instructions for how to do it effectively. Contact us at [email protected] with some basic information about the size and kind of event you want to have.
- Visit schools and universities in your area and tell the students what free software is all about. Add your name, availability, and expertise to the list of teaching volunteers on the LibrePlanet wiki and email your contact details to [email protected] and we're happy to connect you with teachers and professors in your area. Feel free to use the teaching materials on the wiki and upload your own materials to share them with other activists.
Are you a writer, a ranter, a thinker, a politically minded individual?
- Write a free software blog. We will be publishing blog entries from people in the community at https://www.fsf.org/blogs. Please let us know about free software issues that are going on in your local community. Is your school requiring the use of proprietary software in order to complete coursework? Do you help people in your town convert their systems to free software? Send your entries to [email protected].
- Write for our Free Software Bulletin. Twice a year, we publish a printed newsletter with articles of long-term interest to our supporters. Much of it is written by FSF staff and board members, but we welcome outside contributions as well. Send your article or article proposal to [email protected].
- Help post speech videos on audio-video.gnu.org. If you want to volunteer to do this, please write to [email protected].
- Set an example by switching to a *completely* free software operating system. The easiest way to do that is to install and use one of the free GNU/Linux distributions.
Are you local?
- The FSF is always in need of some help around the office. If you are in the Boston area and want to help out, we'd love to have you come by. Learn more about volunteer office tasks at the LibrePlanet wiki page.
- Stuff envelopes. Sometimes we do mailings, and we have to stuff a lot of envelopes. If you are in the Boston area and want to be available on-call for this exciting work, let us know at [email protected].
Are you a news junkie, a professional web surfer?
- Be an Issue Coordinator. Choose one of the issues that the FSF focuses on or should focus on and follow it closely over time. If you have a sustained interest in an area such as DRM, Treacherous Computing or Free BIOS and would like to be responsible for coordinating news gathering and posting on this topic, let us know at [email protected].
- Send us links to and summaries of news stories you read about that are related to free software. We do our best to monitor all of the relevant news, but in the end we depend on people to write to us and let us know that something we should be concerned about is brewing. If you hear about something, let us know at [email protected].
Are you a hacker?
- Volunteer with the FSF Tech Team. Help maintain and improve web sites, services, virtual machines or a some free software software packages like LibreJS. See https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF:Tech_Team_Volunteers for information.
- Contribute to the GNU Project. Check out the many ways to contribute directly to the GNU Project, such hacking, web mastering, administering Savannah, and various sorts of organizational work.
Are you a GNU/Linux user?
- Respects Your Freedom certification program, or our other hardware resources
- Send us a testimonial describing how you use free software in your business or personal life. We post them at https://www.fsf.org/resources/testimonials. You can send them to [email protected].
- Contribute to the Free Software Directory. We have over 16,000 packages listed in the Directory already, but there are plenty more that we don't know about yet, and sometimes the entries that we do have fall out of date or have errors. Read the full instructions for how to help.
- Volunteer as a “Freedom Verifier” to check whether a given distribution contains only free software, so it can be included on the list of free distributions.
Are you multilingual?
- Be a Translator. To help make our pages accessible to all languages, please read https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF-Translators, join https://lists.fsf.org/mailman/listinfo/fsf-translators, and contact [email protected] if you are willing to help.
Are you a designer?
- Contribute graphics and design ideas. We are always looking for new logos and graphics to use on our web pages, in our printed materials, and for t-shirts and other items for sale in our shop. A recent example is the logo for the GPLv3 process, which was designed by a volunteer. If the graphics are smaller than 2 MB, you can send them right to us, otherwise please send a link to [email protected]. Here are some suggestions for future products that might inspire you.
Are you a law geek?
- Be a Licensing Volunteer. Help us answer the many questions we receive every day at the FSF regarding the use and abuse of free software licenses. If you are interested, write to [email protected] and tell us a bit about your background, both legal and with the free software community. Please also run through the GPL quiz and let us know how you do.