In 2006, Doctorow transitioned from his role as a staff member at the electronic-frontier-foundation — where he had served as European Affairs Coordinator — to a fellowship relationship with the organization. The transition was not a departure from EFF's orbit but a restructuring of how he engaged with it: as a fellow rather than an employee, he retained the affiliation, the credibility, and the access, while gaining the flexibility to write fiction full-time and to develop his independent voice.
The timing coincided with the completion of little-brother, which would publish in 2008 at little-brother-published-2008 and become his breakthrough work. The shift from staff advocacy to independent writing reflected a judgment that he could do more for the causes EFF cared about through fiction and public writing than through the day-to-day work of policy coordination — that novels read by teenagers might accomplish more than briefings given to policymakers.
This transition is characteristic of Doctorow's approach to institution-building: maintaining relationships and affiliations while building independent platforms and audiences that are not dependent on any single institution. The same logic later drove the launch of pluralistic-net as an alternative to boing-boing, and his ongoing advocacy through multiple channels rather than any single organizational home.
EFF remained a central reference point throughout the eff-and-fiction-era-2007-2015 and beyond: Doctorow's writing consistently returned to EFF campaigns, legal arguments, and positions as grounding for his advocacy. The fellowship structure made this relationship sustainable without requiring the constraints of employment.