Software Freedom Conservancy
Software Freedom Conservancy is a not-for-profit charity that helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Conservancy provides a non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects. This allows FLOSS developers to focus on what they do best — writing and improving FLOSS for the general public — while Conservancy takes care of the projects' needs that do not relate directly to software development and documentation.
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Recent News
Generous Match Challenge from Individual Conservancy Supporters for Annual Fundraiser
November 24, 2020
We are pleased to launch our annual fundraiser today with a match challenge of $111,029. This match is extremely exciting (not only because it is a prime number for the second year but also) because the pledges comes entirely from individuals (not companies!) who care deeply about software freedom. The bulk of this match challenge was provided by one very generous donor who prefers to remain anonymous. Their amount was augmented by six Conservancy Supporters (listed alphabetically) who came together to increase the match even more: Jeremy Allison, Kevin P. Fleming, Roan Kattouw, Jim McDonough, Allison Randal and Daniel Vetter. You'll be hearing more about why they joined this year's match donation in interviews on our blog in the coming weeks.
Sign up as a Supporter now or renew your Support by January 15th and have your donation count twice!
Conservancy is Hiring!
November 2, 2020
Software Freedom Conservancy is looking for a new employee with the special skills of working on a daily basis with FOSS projects and their leaders.
Conservancy Announces New Strategy for GPL Enforcement and Related Work, Receives Grant from ARDC
October 1, 2020
Software Freedom Conservancy, the only organization actively engaged in General Public License (GPL) enforcement and compliance work for Linux, announces today a new strategy toward improving compliance and the freedom of users of devices that contain Linux-based systems. The new work has received an initial grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC).
Copyleft enforcement ensures software freedom for all. Copyleft licenses require distributors to provide complete source code — including installation instructions. Without this, we do not control the software that surrounds us. Whether we want to fix simple bugs, remove functionality to protect our privacy, or completely replace device firmware, we need the ability to modify and reinstall the software on our devices. Today, Conservancy announces it is undertaking a new, multi-pronged approach to our copyleft compliance work.
OpenWrt Joins Conservancy
September 10, 2020
OpenWrt — building on their sixteen years of success as the most popular Free and Open Source (FOSS) wireless router project — today joins Conservancy as a member project. FOSS wireless routers assure software freedom for all Internet users. Conservancy will help OpenWrt continue to thrive and grow as its new fiscal sponsor.
Conservancy Blog
A Modest Proposal In The New Age of DMCA Takedown Aggression
by on November 13, 2020
GitHub announced yesterday that Google sent a § 1201 DMCA takedown notice for a FOSS project called widevine-l3-decryptor, which comes on the heels of Microsoft's GitHub for its capitulation to the RIAA takedown notice — which alleged, with specious evidence, that youtube-dl violated 17 USC § 1201. Obviously we should appeal this abhorrent law because the DRM wars heat up even further. Nevertheless, I have a modest proposal for how we might improve the situation …
Helping each other: the right to repair win and software freedom
by on November 6, 2020
We were very excited to hear that Massachusetts voters approved a new right to repair law earlier this week. Laws like these are important tools in allowing us to control the devices that we use. In particular, we believe it is important that people be able to fix their own devices, and to be provided with all the information they might need to make the best repair decisions. This principle has applied to cars for over a century and, now that cars are increasingly made up of computers, the implications for both repairing vehicles and software freedom are hard to ignore.
Asking Microsoft to resign from the RIAA over youtube-dl takedown demand
by on October 26, 2020
We learned on Friday that GitHub removed youtube-dl's primary collaboration forum and code repository from their site, which had been hosted at https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl. The action was in response to a DMCA Section 512 notice that the RIAA sent demanding removal of youtube-dl, which was released and distributed via GitHub under a liberal FOSS license. In the notice, the RIAA cites DMCA Section 1201 (the removing digital restrictions section) as justification for youtube-dl's removal.
We believe that youtube-dl has substantial non-infringing uses. There are many, but to name a few, youtube-dl has the following important features:
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An Overview of Conservancy… Conservancy's current member projects… Services Conservancy provides to its member projects… Conservancy's unique work defending and upholding copyleft licenses (e.g., the GPL) … Conservancy's Non-Profit Accounting Project …
