Image credit: Steve Pomeroy, CC BY-SA 3.0

About me

I've been involved in free software for a long time, as a member of the GNU project, and more recently as a member of staff at the Free Software Foundation from 2008-2012 and more recently at both Creative Commons and GitLab. I'm the founder of the GNU FM and GNU social projects (GNU social eventually merged with StatusNet and Free & Social under the GNU social banner) which power sites like Libre.fm. 

I joined the Free Software Foundation after writing and producing the movie, Happy Birthday to GNU starring Stephen Fry, and went to organize the LibrePlanet conference for several years, edit the Free Software Foundation's biannual bulletin and provide a variety of creative contributions to the GNU Project and FSF campaigns. These days I am still involved with the FSF and have presented talks about the history of GNU, the FSF and free software.

More recently, I was the technical lead at Creative Commons, where I worked closely with my long-term friend and colleague, Rob Myers on a number of free software projects. 

Other projects

I spent a whole summer making a feature film -- Orang-U: An Ape Goes To College, a movie which will be edited exclusively using free tools such as Blender, and the "source code" for the movie (video, audio, script, etc) will also be released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license that promotes and fosters sharing and collaboration, with the express goal of seeing what other people can do given the creative keys and tools to edit and remix a feature film. The movie is being released on June 25th.

I've appeared twice on the YouTube show Computerphile talking about various free software issues, including the issue of free software tools for video editing.

Why I'm running

I'm running for OSI board because I want to see the recent friendly cooperation between groups like the OSI and FSF continue, and because I believe that users have a right to control their software, rather than be divided and limited in what they can do. Strength in numbers is key and we should present a united front against proprietary software and those who seek to deny users of their freedom to use software they can control. 

If elected, I'd like to see the OSI run more events for members as an incentive to join, and to greatly improve the audience for the good communications that have been coming out of the OSI in the recent few years.

Our community can be more inclusive and can achieve great things when we come together under a common goal.

Plus, it would be really cool if OSI members got access to an exclusive OSI-members GNU social server as part of the membership benefits.

Contact me

If you have any questions, you'll find me as mattl on OFTC & Freenode, at mattl at gnu dot org, and my GNU social profile at https://mattl.io