Henry Poole is a technologist and social entrepreneur, CEO of
CivicActions
CivicActions, Inc. is a services firm that provides technological support with a focus on free and open-source software to agencies.
History
CivicActions was founded as an Llc in 2004. Their focus was to provide hosted FOSS group forming ne ...
and Board Member of the
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ("s ...
.
He co-founded one of the first digital agencies, Vivid Studios, in 1993. That year, he served as technical editor for the book, ''Demystifying Multimedia''. In 1994, he led a project to study the social interactions and use of technology for the
WELL
A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. T ...
community. In 1995, his firm managed the online launch of Microsoft
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufactu ...
(the largest online technology product introduction of this time).
In 2000, Poole joined as CEO of French Linux publisher
MandrakeSoft. In 2001, Poole founded the first openSAAS enterprise, Affero, Inc. and in 2002, published the
Affero General Public License
The Affero General Public License (Affero GPL and informally Affero License) is a free software license. The first version of the Affero General Public License (AGPLv1), was published by Affero, Inc. in March 2002, and based on the GNU General Pu ...
, version 1. Poole joined the board of the Free Software Foundation in December 2002. In 2003, Poole managed the digital team for Kucinich for US President and in 2004, founded government digital services firm CivicActions. In May 2006, Poole and the Free Software Foundation launched the anti-DRM campaign,
Defective by Design.
A software freedom activist, Poole has organized fundraisers for
Dmitry Sklyarov and the Free Software Foundation.
He is a signatory to the