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
VMware Suit Concludes in Germany
VMware Announces Plans to Remove Non-complying Code, Hellwig Decides Not to Appeal
April 2, 2019
Today, Christoph Hellwig announced the conclusion of his case against VMware in Germany. The Hamburg Higher Regional Court affirmed the lower court's decision, which dismissed the case on purely procedural grounds; they did not address the main question of the case. (The February 28th decision can be found here.) Hellwig has decided with his legal counsel, Till Jaeger, and after conferring with Conservancy, to not appeal the case further in German courts.
Deb Nicholson Receives the Award for the Advancement of Free Software
March 25, 2019
We are proud to announce that our Director of Community Operations, Deb Nicholson, won this year's Award for the Advancement of Free Software. The award was presented on Saturday, March 23rd at LibrePlanet, the Free Software Foundation's annual conference at MIT's Stata Center. The Free Software Foundation gives out two awards each year, one for the Advancement of Free Software and one for Projects of Social Benefit.
Conservancy Becomes an Open Source Initiative Affiliate Member
March 14, 2019
Conservancy joins a long list of Open Source Initiative Affiliate Members. We believe that the non-profits serving free and open source software communities should seek out ways to support each other. There are certainly many different strategies that help us build and maintain a robust commons and a solid consistent understanding of the licenses that enable collaborative development is critical. The Open Source Initiative's role as steward of the Open Source Definition is extremely compatible with our own work to provide a fiscal home for community-driven free software projects and our ongoing work to enforce the General Public License (GPL).
We're Hiring: Techie Bookkeeper
February 14, 2019
Thanks to the help of all of our donors and Supporters, Conservancy is hiring for a critical position in our organization. Please help us spread the word, and if this is a position you're interested in please apply!
Techie Bookkeeper
Software Freedom Conservancy is looking for a new employee to help us with important work that supports our basic operations. Conservancy is a nonprofit charity that promotes and improves free and open source software projects. We are home to almost 50 projects, including Git, Inkscape, Etherpad, phpMyAdmin, and Selenium (to name a few). Conservancy is the home of Outreachy, an award winning diversity intiative, and we also work hard to improve software freedom generally. We are a small but dedicated staff, handling a very large number of financial transactions per year for us and our member projects.
We seek a fifth full-time employee who will help us with our day-to-day bookkeeping needs. Our bookkeeping system is unique in that it requires technical skill to use. We hope that our new employee will help us with our bookkeeping needs today and in the future grow and develop along with the organization.
Conservancy Blog
Conservancy News Round-up
by on April 17, 2019
Check out these videos, blog posts from member projects, code releases and upcoming events.
Do You Know Where Your Code Came From? If You Don't Have Source You Aren't Secure
by on April 4, 2019
I sometimes work for Conservancy assisting in their compliance work. Conservancy follows the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement, enforcement principles published by Conservancy and the Free Software Foundation. As the process goes, Conservancy receives complaints from users about products whose sellers aren't meeting their GPL license obligations and Conservancy may investigate. Many of these complaints are for hardware devices with embedded code. The complaints are almost always are that there is free software on the device but that the source code is not available.
Conservancy at LibrePlanet this Weekend
by on March 20, 2019
This weekend, the Free Software Foundation hosts its 11th annual LibrePlanet conference on March 23-24. The event takes place at the Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Understanding LF's New “Community Bridge”
by on March 13, 2019
Yesterday, the Linux Foundation launched a new service, called “Community Bridge” — an ambitious platform that promises a self-service system to handle finances, address security issues, manage CLAs and license compliance, and also bring mentorship to projects. These tasks are difficult work that typically require human intervention, so we understand the allure of automating them; we and our peer organizations have long welcomed newcomers to this field and have together sought collaborative assistance for these issues. Indeed, Community Bridge's offerings bear some similarity to the work of organizations like Apache Software Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, the GNOME Foundation, Open Source Initiative, Software in the Public Interest and Conservancy. People have already begun to ask us to compare this initiative to our work and the work of our peer organizations. This blog post hopefully answers those questions and anticipated similar questions.
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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 …
