BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Monday, December 12, 2011 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the dates for its upcoming LibrePlanet 2012 conference as March 24th and 25th, 2012, at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. A call for papers has also been announced. The conference will include talks from the FSF staff and board, GNU project contributors, and other members of the global free software community.

Previous LibrePlanet conferences have featured many free software luminaries, including FSF president Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen of the Freedom Box Foundation and Software Freedom Law Center, EFF co-founder John Gilmore, GNOME Foundation executive director Karen Sandler, Jeremy Allison of the Samba project, Selena Deckelmann of PostgreSQL, Máirín Duffy of Fedora, and veteran GNU developer Rob Savoye.

"At last year's event, I promised we would make this conference bigger and better than ever before." said Matt Lee, FSF campaigns manager, "All signs point to us making good on that promise."

The conference is open to the public with purchase of a ticket, but associate members of the Free Software Foundation can attend as a benefit of their financial contribution. A goal of one hundred new associate members has been set in order to fund the conference, and new and existing members are encouraged to contribute online at http://www.fsf.org/associate.

More information on the conference, including a mailing list for updates and speaker announcements, is available at http://www.fsf.org/events/libreplanet-2012.

About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at http://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.

About Free Software and Open Source

The free software movement's goal is freedom for computer users. Some, especially corporations, advocate a different viewpoint, known as "open source," which cites only practical goals such as making software powerful and reliable, focuses on development models, and avoids discussion of ethics and freedom. These two viewpoints are different at the deepest level. For more explanation, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.

Media Contacts

Matt Lee
Campaigns Manager
Free Software Foundation
+1 (617) 542 5942 x24
campaigns@fsf.org