William John Sullivan (more commonly known as John Sullivan; born December 6, 1976) is a software freedom activist, hacker, and writer. John was formerly executive director 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. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

(FSF), where he has worked since early 2003. He is also a speaker and webmaster for the

GNU Project The GNU Project ( ) is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and Computer hardware, computing dev ...

. He also maintains the Plannermode and delicious-el packages for the

GNU Emacs GNU Emacs is a text editor and suite of free software tools. Its development began in 1984 by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, based on the Emacs editor developed for Unix operating systems. GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU ...

text editor.

Biography

Active in both the

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

and

free culture The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content, otherwise known as open content. They encourage creators to create such content by using ...

communities, Sullivan has a BA in philosophy from

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...

and an MFA in Writing and Poetics. In college, Sullivan was a successful

policy debate Policy debate is an American form of debate competition in which teams of two usually advocate for and against a resolution that typically calls for policy change by the United States federal government. It is also referred to as cross-examinat ...

r, reaching finals of CEDA Nationals and the semifinals of the National Debate Tournament. Until 2007, John was the main contact behind the Defective by Design, BadVista and Play Ogg campaigns. He also served as the chief webmaster for the

, until July 2006. He served as Executive Director of the

from 2011 to 2022.

As a speaker for the GNU Project

John has delivered speeches on the following topics, in English: *

Digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures, such as access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM ...

issues and the FSF's Defective by Design campaign * Media format

patents A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

, proprietary licensing, and the FSF's PlayOgg.org campaign * Choosing

over

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

* How you can help: Strategies for communicating and organizing around free software ideals * Why software should be free * Introduction to the

GPLv3 The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

and free software licensing * FSF/GNU high-priority free software projectsHigh Priority Free Software Projects - Free Software Foundation

References

External links

Personal homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sullivan, William John Copyright activists Free software programmers GNU people Michigan State University alumni Naropa University alumni 1976 births Living people