GNU Generation is a new project sponsored by the Free Software Foundation to involve high school age pre-university students (approximately ages 13-18) in free software.

"...Free Software is really something to get excited about. Through the community created by GNU Generation, hopefully that excitement will persevere through the years to come. Unfortunately, it will take more than just a small little campaign to make this happen. It will take the cooperation of all Free Software users, developers, and advocates to really get the message across.

"While GNU Generation isn't the next Google Highly Open Participation Contest™ (GHOP), the two efforts have a lot in common. My name is Max Shinn and I am going into my junior year of high school. This summer, though, I'm interning with the Free Software Foundation (FSF). When I was participating in GHOP, I never imagined that I would be using that experience to start a similar project.

Free software is software you can study, modify and share without restriction. But unlike proprietary software, there is no big budget marketing campaign behind it. Rather, people discover it and come to value the freedom it provides. What are these people's motivations for working on free software? Why is community and sharing so important? Why should everyone be using free software?

On February 14th, Valentine's Day, Free Software Foundation Europe asks all Free Software users to show their appreciation for Free Software. FSFE suggests to take this day as an opportunity to say "thank you" to one of the dedicated hard-working people in the Free Software community.

"Dave Cross encourages the dependence upon proprietary software by complaining that the Free Software Foundation’s recent 25th birthday video should have been distributed in non-free formats so people could see the video..."

GNU Generation is an ongoing community and competition to involve pre-university and high school students (approximately age 13-18) in Free Software. Once registered, students work on a project. Each year, participants will be evaluated based on their contribution to Free Software. All active contributors will receive a complementary membership to the FSF, and the top contributors will win a GNU/Linux netbook! The community has currently 98 participants.

The KDE Community participated in the Outreach Program for Women (OPW) for the first time this year. It was more successful than expected. KDE got many great applications and mentored 4 students contributing to Free Software. The Outreach Program for Women encourages women to get involved in free and open source software.

"The annual free software conference LibrePlanet is the place for the free software community -- from old school hackers to brand new users -- to come together and further the collective goals of the free software movement.