In previous years, the Free Software Foundation used to run a yearly conference known as LibrePlanet: it was typically hosted in Boston (roughly around spring) and had people from the free-software community all around the world come together to discuss free software and the future of the movement.

Having been fortunate enough to attend some of these, I can confirm they were very informative and brought me together with people I would’ve never otherwise gotten to know. Without that experience, I would’ve had a much harder time being able to find a place in the community, so I owe a lot to it. But that’s not to say the model didn’t come without its drawbacks.

The community surrounding the FSF is a highly global one. When you enter the forum, the chats, the wikis, and even the conferences, you really get a sense for how geographically dispersed this movement is: we have people everywhere from Africa to Asia to North America all trying to coordinate for a common cause. When you host a single, central conference in-person, you can often run the risk of excluding people who are further away from the venue. The FSF, to their credit, have tried to bridge this somewhat with virtual attendance options, but it seems like there was still more work to be done in bridging that gap. So, this year (on the 40th anniversary of the organization, no less), the FSF decided to take things a step further and completely scrap the traditional conference model.

Instead of showing up to the same convention center for a weekend in March, we now have the entire month of May set aside for community members across the world to self-organize their own local groups. This would, in theory, greatly reduce the barriers to participation while still bringing people together.

But the added flexibility does come with its own catch: the availability of these groups hinges a lot more on the ability of local advocates to effectively take on the work of organizing. It also requires the FSF to provide tools that will allow for smooth discovery and connecting of activists. The LibrePlanet wiki is supposed to be the answer to this problem: local groups can post their location, meeting times, and contact, allowing people to quickly find the closest team to them and start getting in touch. In practice, this ends up being rockier than it would appear.

But, speaking as someone who tried to get in touch with the local network of activists, I quickly found that their page hadn’t been updated in years, and a lot of the posted email addresses of the organizers pointed to expired domains. What should have been as simple as checking the page and sending the email turned into a wild goose-chase of chasing down outdated leads that are still presented on the wiki as up to date. As I quickly scanned around on the other pages, I began to notice a problem: this is a pattern across the groups. The FSF does not seem to be on top of which groups actually are/are not active, and this can create false impressions about how successful our networking efforts actually are.

So, what I want to do this month for “LibreLocal Month” is post a survey of all the LibreLocals across my country (the United States) and save you the trouble of figuring out which ones are active and which ones aren’t.

Why America?

International coordination is important, but national is too. People who are roughly within a reasonable geographic distance, subject to the same regulatory regime, and are facing a similar tech environment need to be on the same page in order to effectively mobilize within agiven region.

Despite how large the United States is (and how much of the tech industry hosts itself here), it’s actually quite alarming how underdeveloped our presence is in this country. In other regions like Europe and India, there’s a much more organized presence of free-software activists who regularly connect with each other and have actually built out the infrastructure to serve as a serious force. We need to start doing the same here.

Survey of LibreLocals Across the United States of America

Right away one of the problems you’re going to be seeing is that almost none of these pages have a “Last Modified” tag on them, which makes it impossible to tell how long ago a page was made, further adding confusion to which groups have been abandoned and which haven’t. Groups marked Inactive and Active on the wiki page share space, which only further serves to paint an inaccurate picture of how much of a presence the FSF actually has across the country.

With that in mind, I’ll be taking a more aggressive approach to be declaring groups dead: the average person needs to be able to easily get in touch with the organizers and know what’s going on, otherwise I don’t think it makes sense to count that group as viable.

West (Coastal Region)

The West Coast currently does not have any actively running LibrePlanet Chapters. That being said, there seems to be potential to revive the California and Washington chapters by reaching out to the old members.

California

On the wiki is a LibrePlanet group for the Bay Area. The only form of contact given is a Meetup.com link (which seems to have been last active in 2015). One of the organizers (Pete Forsyth) still seems to have an active presence on Wikipedia with his user page containing further contact information.

Despite this group being marked as Active, it’s pretty clearly Inactive.

Oregon

The Oregon group is based in Sutherlin (southwest of the state). The mailing list no longer seems to exist and the only member does not seem to be easily reachable.

Despite this group being marked as Active on the wiki, it seems to be Inactive.

Washington

Going off of the mailing list, it seems like LibrePlanet Washington was exceptionally active between the years of 2011-2018. The main organizer (AJ Jordan) has a still-active presence online, with his blog containing some possible contact venues.

Having reached out to AJ, I got confirmation that the chapter is currently Inactive and that he no longer resides in the region.

West (Mountain Region)

The FSF does actually have a relatively established presence within the West. Two chapters (Colorado and Nevada) are currently active and meeting.

Colorado

The page for the Denver group was last updated January 2025. The group affiliates itself with the Software Freedom School, whose mailing list indicates it’s still active as of April 2025.

The Colorado chapter does in fact seem to be Active.

Nevada

The Nevada group bases itself in Las Vegas. The mailing list was used between the years 2020-2022 and the website is down. However, the GetTogether page shows that the group is still meeting up through the year 2025.

The page might need some updating to scrub out inactive venues, but this LibreLocal group does in fact seem to be Active.

Utah

The Utah grouping bases itself in Salt Lake City. The organizer has a webpage that’s still up and an email, but the website does not give a clear indication as to present-day online activity. The group’s posted IRC channel does not seem to still be active.

The wiki marks this group as In Formation, but it’s likely Inactive.

New England

The only active New England chapters are in the Boston area, with a lot of community members and contacts happening to be around Massachusetts. New England is a relatively small region, so this might not be too much of an issue.

Connecticut

The Connecticut group’s mailing list has not been properly used in years. The main organizer’s linked contact methods all seem to be offline now, which indicates that they’re no longer actively online.

The wiki lists this group as Active, but it is for all intents and purposes Inactive.

Massachusetts

Boston has long been (until this year) the home of the Free Software Foundation and its headquarters, so it should go without surprise that this is one of the areas with an active community that still regularly meets in-person. The LibrePlanet wiki page lists LibreBoston as the chapter for the area.

LibreBoston is in fact, very much Active.

Mid-Atlantic

The FSF has no presence in the Mid-Atlantic region currently, with no clear leads towards starting one.

Maryland

Nobody involved with the Maryland group is contactable, with their emails often being hosted on domains that are now expired. No channels or mailing lists for the group are shown.

Despite the wiki marking this group as Active, it is functionally Inactive.

Midwest

Illinois is the only state in the Midwest which seems to have an active presence of FSF members looking to organize. Whether or not the chapter is active, the spaces are still open and the people running it are easily reachable, which is a good sign.

Illinois

LibrePlanet Illinois was formed in 2024 and had it’s last meetup (according to the wiki) only a few months ago. This group’s page has both an IRC chat and a Matrix room linked.

I’m still awaiting confirmation from those running it and will update this section once I get a response, but for the time being I will provisionally mark LibrePlanet Illinois as Active.

Minnesota

LibrePlanet Minnesota does not specify a location and the group IRC channel seems to be dead. The mailing list provided does not seem to exist either. The organizer has a website which is now offline, and an FSF member email which may or may not be regularly checked. He is not active on the FSF member forum either. One of the members (Mtift) still seems to have an active online presence (and is likely reachable) going off of his linked webpage.

This group, despite being marked as Active on the wiki, is in fact Inactive.

Missouri

The regional placement of Missouri is… contentious, but we’ll go with the Census Bureau’s definition. LibreEagle is held in Springfield and serves Southwest Missouri as a region. The group has a website which is now offline (last online in 2017), but lists no other form of contact. There is a meeting date and location present on the page, but it’s unclear which year that meeting was for.

This group is Inactive.

Ohio

An IRC channel is listed as the main form of contact, but it’s currently empty. The last time the wiki page seems to have been updated is 2019. The organizer has an email address, but his online presence does not show recent activity.

This group, despite being marked as Active on the wiki, seems to be Inactive.

Deep South

There is no active presence for LibrePlanet in the Southern United States. There have been groups that formerly existed, but in reality they’re not active. If you wish to organize a group in this region, a potential lead for gathering people might be tracking down those formerly involved with LibrePlanet South Florida.

Alabama

Alabama is currently listed as one of two states with LibreLocals in the Deep South. Members are expected to join via Discord, with no other option available for contact. The link to the Discord server in question is entirely expired.

The only member (and organizer) has a profile page which contains no details for contact information. They do not have a presence on the FSF member forum, and searching their username on the web doesn’t yield any results.

This group – despite the wiki marking it as Active – should be considered Inactive.

Florida

This group is hosted in South Florida (specifically covering the Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach areas). Another general Florida group was previously formed, but they’ve in the time since marked themselves as inactive and redirected people to the South Florida group.

This group has provided a myriad of options for contact: a group website, Matrix, Mastodon, and GitLab. The website on the page is no longer online (but there’s another one online under a different domain), and the GitLab/Mastodon have not been updated in the past four years. The Matrix channel is still online but hasn’t been regularly posted in since 2022/2023. The main organizer seems to no longer have an active presence online, but his user page does provide contact information.

The group has officially declared themselves Inactive on their own channels, but the LibrePlanet wiki page still incorrectly lists the group as Active.

Summary

Only three chapters can unambiguously said to be still active: Denver, Las Vegas, and Boston. This provides coverage to the non-coastal West and New England. The wiki provides some leads whereby communities might be establishable in parts of the West and Midwest. But the fact still remains that for the majority of the country, and a lot of our key tech hubs, the FSF does not have any sort of presence at all. The work of establishing this will have to be done ground up, from scratch.

Nearly every single inactive chapter on the LibrePlanet wiki is still mislabeled as being Active. In a lot of cases, contacting relevant parties requires quite a bit of digging and there’s very little standardization in terms of where you find what information.

The LibrePlanet wiki, as it currently stands, is not sufficient as a source to readily understanding whether or not there is an active chapter in your area, or who around you is active and willing to join you. There needs to be a sweep and pruning of inactive chapters across the wiki, and more proactive initiatives to locate potential members across the country and actively seed chapters.

Those involved in organizing their local chapters should keep in contact with each other, and share resources, ideas, and strategies where deemed fit. This is why I (and the LibreBoston group) are working to both identify parties interested in organizing across the country and bringing them into a common conversation. If you are someone who is looking to start a chapter or is already running one, please get in contact with me via Mastodon and I’ll get you connected to the others.