On August 31, 2024 the Free Software Foundation will close its office for the last time as the organization goes all remote.
If you’ve ever had a hankering to drop by the Free Software Foundation’s office in downtown Boston, you basically have only one last chance to do so. That’s because at the end of the month FSF is vacating the office at 51 Franklin Street that it’s called home for the past 19 years, to become a 100% remote organization. To make sure folks have the chance to drop in and say their goodbyes, the organization has scheduled a move-out party on Friday August 16 from 6:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
“While we’re spending time together and saying farewell to our office, we will have our GNU Press shop open for you to get any FSF merch that you’ve had your eye on, but haven’t quite made the leap to purchase, and we will also be running a donation-based garage sale,” the FSF said on its website. “We have a variety of furniture (including desks, chairs, and a conference table) and other office odds and ends that we’d like to go to the community. Everything that we have up for grabs will be priced as ‘pay what you want.’ If you’ve been looking to sustainably add something new to your office, definitely swing by to see if anything from our office might be a good fit for yours!”
Considering that the genesis of the FSF was pretty much the beginning of the free software movement, which gave birth to the whole open source ecosphere, the last party at the organization’s last physical location should become something of a historic event for the free software and open source communities.
If you’re new to the neighborhood: The Free Software Foundation was founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985 to support the then burgeoning free software movement. About four months later, Stallman would write and FSF would publish the Free Software Definition, which led to the creation of the GNU General Public License in 1989.
Stallman led the organization for many years and is still active as a board member.
The Whys and Wherefores of Going Remote
In an email exchange earlier this week, FSF’s executive director Zoë Kooyman told FOSS Force that similar to many organizations, FSF’s move to remote actually began during the Covid pandemic.
“During Covid staff went remote and only few came back to the office after that,” she said. “During this time the FSF became an organization effective at doing our advocacy from multiple time zones. The in-person part of our work is only now picking back up and might never completely be the same. Having less people in an office that was already big for us is not sustainable.”
The move to becoming a fully remote made sense on a number of levels, Kooyman explained. For starters, many of the other projects with which FSF works have traditionally been mostly if not fully remote. Also, the rising cost of real estate also played into the decision, especially since working remotely also saves money for FSF employees.
“The cost of leasing and maintaining offices in Boston has increased dramatically for everyone over the past few years and FSF is no exception,” she added. “We are in one of the most expensive office markets in the United States. This move will allow us to focus less on maintaining an office where our tech team is maintaining all the infrastructure, and more on doing work to fortify the FSF’s infrastructure that benefits our community, the GNU Project, and other free software projects.”
The Long Goodbye
The goodbye party, or at least the goodbye-to-downtown-Boston party, on the 16th won’t be the end of it for a couple of weeks for the folks working at the Franklin Street facility, as they’ll still be on premises packing and moving.
“We ourselves will close the doors for the last time August 31st,” Kooyman said. “If people still want to come by between the 16th and then, they should email us at info@fsf.org.”
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
