[GNU/FSF Press] FSF announces annual meeting March 21-22: The LibrePlanet 2009 conference

[John Sullivan]

Boston, Massachusetts, USA--Thursday, February 5, 2009--The Free
Software Foundation has announced LibrePlanet 2009, an expansion of
its traditional annual meeting to a two-day event. The event will be
held in Cambridge, MA, on March 21st and March 22nd, 2009, and in
addition to presentations from FSF staff and board members will
include a full "unconference" day of work oriented toward
progressing free network services and other areas important to the
free software community as outlined on the FSF's High Priority
Projects list.

Alongside last year's meeting, the FSF helped launch the
autonomo.us working group, convened as an independent advisory group
of programmers and activists concerned about the effects of network
services on user freedom. Continuing on that path, several
autonomo.us members will be in attendance at this year's event to
help lead talks and participate in working groups, including Evan
Prodromou of identi.ca, FSF board members Benjamin Mako Hill and
Henri Poole, the Software Freedom Conservancy's Bradley Kuhn, and
Creative Commons's Mike Linksvayer.

FSF's operations manager John Sullivan said, "It's exciting that
now, in our seventh year of hosting this event, we're able to expand
it to two days and add an 'unconference' style segment bringing
together community members to focus on making tangible progress in
these critical areas. We intend this as a working conference, but
participation is not limited to coders; we'll also need folks who
can do visual design, write and edit text, and share their
experiences as free software users."

LibrePlanet 2009 attendance is free to FSF associate members, with
nonmembers who are committed to the ideals of software freedom
paying a $60 fee to cover conference costs. Space is limited, so the
FSF is requesting RSVPs to <address@hidden> by March 2. Further
details and the conference wiki can be found at
<http://www.fsf.org/associate/meetings/2009>. The list of High
Priority Projects is at
<http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority.html>.

### About the FSF

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.

### Media Contacts

John Sullivan  
Operations Manager  
Free Software Foundation  
(617)542-5942  
<address@hidden>