FSF40: Free software activists to speak on their history of involvement
Update: as of October 1, 2025, Yoni Rabkin will unfortunately no longer be able to speak due to personal circumstances. Instead, Corwin Brust is speaking in Yoni's place.
The FSF has been campaigning for software freedom for over forty years. As part of its celebrations, the organization has asked some of its long-standing community members to reflect on their work for the FSF, GNU, and free software generally. The FSF is pleased to announce that free software activists Panos Alevropoulos, Amin Bandali, and Yoni Rabkin will be speaking on the topic.
"It's great to be able to give these community members a chance to share their work with the wider free software world," said Greg Farough, campaigns manager of the FSF. "The movement for software freedom needs this kind of dedication. We hope it will inspire future contributions to GNU, FSF initiatives, and really, anything to do with libre software."
The volunteers' commitment to the free software movement will be the main topic. Each participant will be given the opportunity to reflect on their history with free software: both how they came to the movement and what drives their volunteer work.
About the participants
Panos Alevropoulos is a lawyer from Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds a law degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a Master's in Internet and Information Systems Law from the University of Strasbourg. He began his journey in software freedom in 2021 as an intern with the Free Software Foundation, gaining hands-on experience in free software licensing and advocacy. Since then, he has remained actively involved as a volunteer with the FSF’s Licensing & Compliance Lab and as administrator of the End Software Patents Wiki. He sees the free software community as a living blueprint for cooperative progress.
Amin Bandali is a computing scientist and activist for user freedom, and a participant in various free software projects and communities. Bandali wears a few hats around the GNU Project and is a volunteer member of the Free Software Foundation SysOps team, a core organizer of the EmacsConf conference, a Debian developer, and a contributor to the Trisquel GNU/Linux distribution.
Yoni Rabkin is a parent, programmer, and paralegal who thinks that everyone should be contributing meaningfully to society within their means. Yoni is the maintainer of EMMS, the Emacs Multimedia System, and has been a licensing volunteer for the FSF since 2006. When Yoni isn't parenting, programming, or paralegal-ing, he can be found in the woodworking workshop practicing pre-industrial and traditional joinery.
Further details
Registration for the in-person and online versions of the event are now open.
The panel is just one of many initiatives around the fortieth anniversary of the FSF. Learn what else is happening during the anniversary year on fsf.org/fsf40.
Press Kit
The FSF prepared a press kit for the fortieth anniversary that includes a timeline of events, the most important announcements around the fortieth anniversary, and a short history of the FSF.
About the Free Software Foundation
The FSF, 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 websites, located at https://www.fsf.org and https://www.gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at https://donate.fsf.org. The FSF is a remote organization, incorporated in Massachusetts, US.
MEDIA CONTACT
Greg Farough
Campaigns Manager
Free Software Foundation
+1 (617) 542 5942
campaigns@fsf.org
"Computer programmer typing code" © 2015, Pixabay. This image is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
