The Free Software Foundation (FOSS) is an organization created in October 1985 by Richard Stallman and other free software enthusiasts in order to spread this movement.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, understanding, and modification of computer programs. To this end, promotes the development and use of free software in all areas of computing, but most particularly by helping to develop the GNU operating system.

gnu.org [1]
In the beginning, the FSF earmarked its funds mainly to hire programmers to write free software. From mid 1990, there are already many companies and individual authors who write free software, so employees and volunteers of the FSF have focused their work mainly in legal, organizational and promotional benefit the user community Free software.