In an open letter to Google, the Free Software Foundation suggested that the software giant freely release the VP8 HD video compression format after having acquired the On2 video technology firm.

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?

"The GNU operating system is 25 years old this year! Stephen Fry has a celebratory video where he explains software freedom in a very non-technical and accessible way. The video is licensed to share and available in multiple free formats, of course.

"The recent launch of Stephen Fry's film in celebration of GNU's 25th anniversary has been a success on a number of levels — including for PlayOgg.org , the campaign for free audio and video formats. Worldwide, people have reached out to thank us and offer their support, including dozens of volunteers who have translated the film into over 24 languages.

"People are ignorant, but we already know that. As usual, I’ve read something really stupid on Twitter this morning. It said: I hope Apple will develop for everyone [every OS]. I think it would be one of the worst things to ever happen. Why do people want to install non-free software on free systems?

Free software for video is currently in sad shape. The only two widely distributed free video editing programs, Kino and Cinelerra, are nowhere near as capable as competing commercial software

Although Google's take-over of On2 Technologies has only just been completed, already the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is calling on the company to release On2's video codec technology as a patent free standard.

«Great, great video from Lawrence Lessig about the importance of the free software movement to society and culture as a whole. Lessig also wrote the forward to Richard Stallman's book "Free Software, Free Society" and it's one of the many things that helped me see the big picture where free software is concerned.»

The Free Software Foundation has started a community for young people interested in contributing to free software. The GNU Generation community is aimed at people between the ages of 13 and 18 and encourages them to participate in the development of free software.