(AFX) - NAME -- Electronic Frontier Foundation
AGE -- Turns 16 on July 10.
ROOTS -- Formed by three technology pioneers who met on The WELL, an online community: Mitch Kapor, who co-founded Lotus Development Corp., which developed trailblazing programs such as Notes and the 1-2-3 spreadsheet; John Perry Barlow, a prominent computer ethicist, Grateful Dead songwriter and retired Wyoming rancher; and John Gilmore, who was employee No. 5 at Sun Microsystems Inc. and co-established the 'alt' hierarchy for Usenet newsgroups.
FUNDING -- Annual budget of $2.5 million, with some 75 percent coming from individual members, now numbering at about 11,500. Twenty percent comes from such foundations as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the David Bohnett Foundation and the Mitchell Kapor Foundation. Its few corporate sponsors include Google Inc., which helps subsidizes a clearinghouse on threats by intellectual property holders demanding the removal of Web content. The EFF started an endowment in 2004, with the only donation so far a $1 million grant from the estate of longtime EFF supporter Leonard Zubkoff.
SPIN-OFFS -- In 1994, some staffers left to form the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington as the EFF shifted emphasis and headquarters to San Francisco. In 1997, the EFF spun off the TRUSTe privacy-certification program for businesses.
HOME -- San Francisco.
QUOTE -- 'Each new technology shifts the power structures. It takes what used to be a well-understood playing field and makes part of it no man's land again. Those unsettled areas can either settle out in ways that provide freedom and egalitarian opportunities or they can settle out in a way that says these guys who got there first are going to own the area for all of eternity. ... I'm just glad that working together with the EFF and through members and collaborators that we were able to push back those boundaries to make sure that in large parts of technology, freedom is still the rule.'
--John Gilmore, EFF co-founder and board member.
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