In general, Debian has been developed openly and distributed freely according to some of the principles of the GNU Project and Free Software.[7][11] Because of this, the Free Software Foundation sponsored the project from November 1994 to November 1995.[12] However, it is no longer endorsed by GNU and the FSF due to the distribution's long-term practice of hosting non-free software repositories and, since 2022, its inclusion of non-free firmware in its installation media by default.[7][8] On June 16, 1997, the Debian Project founded the nonprofit organization Software in the Public Interest to continue financially supporting development.