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
Karen Sandler Delivered Keynote at Linux.conf.au
February 2, 2018
At Linux.conf.au (LCA) last week, Conservancy's Executive Director Karen Sandler delivered a keynote "Six Years Later, or Hey, did you ever get the source code to that thing in your heart?" In her first LCA keynote 6 years ago, Karen first told the people of LCA about her heart condition and the defibrillator that she needed to have implanted. This year she described her continued quest to receive the source code for the software running in her defibrillator, and how far she has been able to get in obtaining the source code that she's been requesting for over a decade now.
Tony Sebro to Join Conservancy Board of Directors & Outreachy Leadership
January 12, 2018
Tony Sebro, who was Conservancy’s second full-time employee, is moving on to become Deputy General Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, the home of Wikipedia. We say goodbye to Tony as a Conservancy employee today, but more importantly we welcome him to a number of new volunteer roles at our organization.
Specifically, Conservancy’s Board of Directors has invited Tony to serve as an at-large Director. Tony has also joined the Project Leadership committee of Conservancy’s Outreachy project (our internship program for free and open source software contribution for underrepresented groups). We are thrilled that Tony will continue to contribute his expertise to our organization, and to formalize his participation with our key internship program.
Pineapple Fund Supports Conservancy
Invests in free software with Bitcoin donation
January 11, 2018
Software Freedom Conservancy thanks the Pineapple Fund and its anonymous backer for its recent donation of over 18 Bitcoin (approximately $250,000). The Pineapple Fund is run by an early Bitcoin adopter to give about $86 million worth of Bitcoin to various charities. Shortly after the fund’s announcement earlier this month, volunteers and Conservancy staff members applied for its support. That application was granted this week.
Conservancy Joins in Cisco v. Arista Amicus Brief
January 3, 2018
Software Freedom Conservancy is pleased to announce that it has joined GitHub, Mozilla Corporation, and Engine Advocacy, in an amicus brief for the Cisco v. Arista case. In the brief, we argue against extending copyright law unduly to ideas and functionality embodied in software — namely, that imitating command-line interfaces should not alone constitute copyright infringement.
Conservancy Blog
Conservancy at LibrePlanet 2018
by on March 22, 2018
March 24-25th hundreds of free software activists, community managers, hackers, legal experts, and all around fans will meet in Cambridge, MA for LibrePlanet 2018, the Free Software Foundation's annual conference and members meeting.
Conservancy's own Bradley Kuhn, Brett Smith, Karen Sandler, and Denver Gingerich -- our part-time compliance engineer -- will all be speaking. Come and see us in our booth in the exhibit hall!
Copyleft compliance misconception #1: Companies check their source builds before publishing
by on February 15, 2018
We often hear from people that are confused about why companies fail to meet their copyleft compliance obligations - it seems fairly straight-forward to do, so why don't they all do it? In its many years of experience attempting to help companies comply with the GPL and other copyleft licenses, Conservancy has seen first-hand how many of the expectations software users have about how a company would release source tend to not be met the majority of the time. This post is Conservancy's first in a series on these common misconceptions about copyleft compliance, which will hopefully provide some insight for people wondering why these expectations are seemingly seldom met.
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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 …
