FOUNDATION NEWS

Free Knowledge Preservation Foundation Officially Launches

Today marks the official launch of the Free Knowledge Preservation Foundation (FKPF) — an independent effort to keep free and open source software, its licenses, and its documentation accessible for the long term.

Software disappears more often than people realize. A maintainer moves on, a hosting provider shuts down, a domain lapses, and years of work quietly go dark. None of that requires anything to have gone wrong — it just requires nobody to have kept a copy.

FKPF exists to be that copy. The archive already tracks software releases, their licenses, and related documentation, each entry scored automatically on how well it is actually preserved: working mirrors, clear licensing, complete metadata, and where possible, verifiable checksums against the real, currently downloadable files.

This is a long-term project by design. We would rather grow slowly and stay honest about what is and isn’t done yet than overstate where things are. You can read the reasoning behind the project in full on the Manifesto page.