Editing John Gilmore (activist) (section)

== Life and career ==

As the fifth employee of [[Sun Microsystems]] and founder of [[Cygnus Solutions|Cygnus Support]], he became wealthy enough to retire early and pursue other interests. He is also one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation based in [[San Francisco]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sengupta |first=Somini |date=June 13, 2013 |title=Secret Surveillance Court May Reveal Some Secrets |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/secret-surveillance-court-may-reveal-some-secrets/ |access-date=2024-07-01 |website=Bits Blog |language=en}}</ref>

He is a frequent contributor to [[free software]], and worked on several [[GNU]] projects, including maintaining the [[GNU Debugger]] in the early 1990s, initiating [[GNU Radio]] in 1998, starting [[Gnash (software)|Gnash]] media player in December 2005 to create a free software player for [[Adobe Flash|Flash]] movies, and writing the pdtar program which became GNU [[Tar (computing)|tar]]. Outside of the GNU project he founded the [[FreeS/WAN]] project, an implementation of [[IPsec]], to promote the encryption of Internet traffic. He sponsored the [[Electronic Frontier Foundation|EFF]]'s [[EFF DES cracker|Deep Crack]] [[Data Encryption Standard|DES]] cracker, sponsored the [[Micropolis (software)|Micropolis]] city building game based on [[SimCity (1989 video game)|SimCity]], and is a proponent of [[opportunistic encryption]].

Gilmore co-authored the [[Bootstrap Protocol]]{{Ref RFC|951}} with Bill Croft in 1985. The Bootstrap Protocol evolved into [[DHCP]], the method by which Ethernet and wireless networks typically assign devices an [[IP address]].

On October 22, 2021, [[Electronic Frontier Foundation|EFF]] announced that they had removed Gilmore from the Board following a governance dispute.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cohn |first=Cindy |author-link=Cindy Cohn |date=October 22, 2021 |title=John Gilmore Leaves the EFF Board, Becomes Board Member Emeritus |url= https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/10/john-gilmore-leaves-eff-board-becomes-board-member-emeritus |access-date=October 23, 2021 |website=Electronic Frontier Foundation}}</ref> The details of the dispute were not made public.<ref>{{cite news |title=EFF co-founder John Gilmore removed from org's Board |url= https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/25/john_gilmore_removed_from_eff_board/ |work=TheRegister.com |date=October 25, 2021}}</ref>

On June 23, 2024, Gilmore was selected as a board member of the [[Free Software Foundation]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=FSF adds three highly qualified board members — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software |url=https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-3-highly-qualified-board-members |access-date=2024-06-30 |website=www.fsf.org}}</ref>