February is a month to celebrate love for many things: our loved ones,
our communities, and the free software behind most people’s digital
lives in some form or another. Through I Love Free Software
Day (#ILoveFS), the free software community has honored the hard
work of the many, many people who maintain and improve free software.
Launched in 2010 by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE),
#ILoveFS is intended as a special day to tell everyone maintaining,
contributing to, and advocating for free software, “thank you!” The
free software movement wouldn’t be anywhere near the size it is today
without the massive community of individuals and organizations
building a world where everyone can use, share, study, and
improve the software we all use.
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We can reliably use our favorite free software programs thanks to maintainers. |
Join us in celebrating maintainers!
This year, we would like to extend some extra love to the maintainers
behind the tens of thousands free software projects. Maintainers
play a huge role in free software, from writing the initial versions
of a project to updating and improving functioning, stability, and
alignment with the evolving needs of users. Without the often
difficult, sometimes thankless, work of maintainers, much of the free
software we use regularly would be significantly less useful, let
alone work at all.
Every time that we use a free software project, especially the smaller
ones, we should do our best to be thankful for the hard work that
maintainers do to keep it running. Software maintenance, especially
for smaller packages, is often not paid or not valued enough even when
paid, which results in overworked and underappreciated maintainers,
and consequentially, burnout. There are a lot of things that you can
do to help fight this burnout and show appreciation for the countless
maintainers behind free software, including:
- Reaching out to a maintainer and let them know how much you
appreciate their work, and what kinds of things you do with the
software they work on; - Submitting an update to a free software project;
- Becoming a free software project maintainer;
- Donating to a free software project that you use;
- Participating in a hackathon this year;
- Helping with a translation if you are fluent in more than one
language; - Learning how software libraries work;
- Examining how a program you use frequently actually works;
- Sharing with others your favorite updates or changes made to a
program you regularly use; - Showing someone the basics of a free software program you use. For
some ideas on which programs to show someone, check out the
Freedom Ladder; or - Creating a social media image with the sharepic template
created by the FSFE proclaiming why you love a particular project
or just free software in general (if sharing on your microblog,
please tag #ILoveFS).
Special thanks
Thank you to everyone who maintains free software, especially
GNU maintainers. The tools we use everyday, professionally and
personally, let alone our website, would not be possible without the
selfless and dedicated maintainers who make using only free software
possible. We can’t thank these generous and hardworking people enough.
Thank you to the FSFE for starting I Love Free Software Day and
designing the sharepic SVG.
Finally, thank you dear reader for being part of the free software
community. Software freedom relies on individual people using the four
freedoms and advocating for greater user freedom. It is because of
activists and people choosing to use free software as much as possible
that we have a day to celebrate our love of free software. I Love Free
Software Day is more than a special day to celebrate how much we love
free software: it is a milestone to reflect on how far we’ve come and
energize ourselves for the work ahead. Let’s celebrate our love of
free software and get ready to take on the year ahead!
This work, “Puzzle heart with LibrePlanet sleeves,” is adapted from “Puzzle heart” © 2016 by CMadeo, made available under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. “Puzzle heart with LibrePlanet sleeves” © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.by Eko KA Owen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
