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Conservancy Blog
Displaying posts by Karen Sandler
Reporting on OSCON 2016
by on May 28, 2016
Last week was OSCON 2016, and the first year that the conference was held in Austin, Texas. OSCON has always been an important conference for Conservancy and for me personally. In 2011, it was the first conference I ever keynoted (I was also on a keynote panel in 2008, which was the closest I'd gotten before then), and where I really started talking about my heart condition and medical devices. OSCON was also the conference where we had the first Conservancy booth and debuted Conservancy t-shirts and stickers.
Austin seems to really suit OSCON. The feel of the conference was comparable to Portland, but there seemed to be a lot of new local participation resulting in a much more diverse conference. I met a lot of great people for whom it was their first time at the conference and made a lot of good connections. Conferences, and OSCON in particular, are always short on time and often I was in a dead run from one thing to the next.
I participated in two sessions on Thursday. One was a talk I gave on employment agreements. I outlined basic issues to look for in signing an employment agreement but my main point was that employment agreements can often be negotiated. Companies have standard contracts that they use for all employees, but in many areas they may be prepared to edit the agreement as part of an onboarding negotiation. After you receive your offer, but before you sign the employment agreement, you are likely to have more power in the relationship than you will again. The company has expended resources in recruiting and interviewing you, and has come to the decision that you're the best person for the job. Just as you negotiate your salary and other important terms of employment, some of the contractual provisions are also likely to be flexible. I've seen a lot of agreements over the years, and every time I've talked to someone about this issue they've been able to get *some* change.
Because of this, and because it's so hard to know what to ask for if you're not a lawyer like me, Conservancy is working on a project of standard employment agreement provisions that could be worth asking for. If many prospective employees ask for this, some companies may start to give this as a perk to attract top talent.
The second session was a panel about free and open software foundations. Moderated by Deb Bryant, the panel discussed issues around foundation formation, fiscal sponsorship and revenue models. I was really excited that multiple people in the session recommended Conservancy as a nonprofit home, and also encouraged audience members to become Supporters of Conservancy! There are a lot of great organizations in free and open source software and it was so interesting to see how many roles the panelists serve in them.
Conservancy had a booth, so I spent most of the rest of the time there. It was great to be in one of the nonprofit areas with so many other awesome nonprofits in our field. It was also the first time we had multiple stickers, including the very first Outreachy stickers.
I was also able to catch a panel on patents that Bradley was a part of, eloquently reminding everyone how deeply problematic software patents are.
Lastly, it was great to meet with other Outreachy organizers! We don't have a chance to meet in person very often and we always have so much to discuss.
After the conference ended on Thursday, we had a chance to relax and talk about the conference with Conservancy Supporters at our pool party. I'm always struck by how impressive our Supporters are. While walking around the party, I caught conversations about the future of free software, copyleft, enforcement, patents, conferences and even one where we recruited someone great to apply for the GNOME Executive Director job! I was so excited by the enthusiasm of our Supporters. Aside from the financial aspect, which is critical for us, with such a small staff it would otherwise be impossible to do all of our work and tell people about it without their help. While it's taken me all week to recover from the conference and try to catch up on the backlog of work that piled up, I feel reinvigorated and recharged!
See you at LibrePlanet!
by on March 18, 2016
I'm getting ready to head up to Massachusetts for LibrePlanet, one of my favorite conferences! This year will be a bit different, as Conservancy is having our very first booth there. I'm particularly excited about the amazing volunteers who have agreed to staff the booth. We started an email thread to coordinate schedules about who should be in the booth when, and got talking about what message we wanted to convey through the booth.
In a quick summary of talking points, I mentioned that I thought LibrePlanet attendees would be most interested in GPL enforcement and Outreachy. Ira Cooper, Samba Team Member and one of the volunteers wrote back:
Do you think we'll have anyone asking about what benefits the projects recieve? To be honest, as a member of the conservancy, to some degree, the boring things matter most. Without someone to help with handling our finances etc... It'd be chaos.
The fact that there is a structure where multiple projects can share that work, is actually at least as powerful in some ways.
Yes, the GPL and what not, is the flashy stuff. But... It is important to tell people about the things that allow these projects to live and breathe. :)
Soon after, Yamil Suarez, another volunteer with the Evergreen project chimed in:
Also, I wanted to add that to my project (Evergreen), it really matters to have the SFC keeps us in compliance with the IRS. Even though we have a our own board there is always turnaround, the SFC gives us continuation in our regulatory compliance. Which I think is invaluable. Also, when hosting conferences, there are plenty of regulatory minefields involved that the SFC keeps an eye on.
I was truly floored by how clear and eloquent Ira and Yamil were about the usefulness of Conservancy as a fiscal sponsor. I often find it hard to quickly explain that part of the Conservancy's work. Glossing over "the boring stuff" just doesn't explain the challenges we try to address or why we're so valuable to our Member Projects. I'm really looking forward to spending time with all of our volunteers in the booth this weekend. If you're at LibrePlanet, stop by and say hello.
Plus if you can and haven't done so already, please consider signing up as a Conservancy Supporter, and you'll be invited to a cocktail hour celebrating 10 years of Conservancy!. If you are already a Supporter, don't forget to RSVP by tomorrow. Bradley and I will both be there (and at LibrePlanet, generally), excited to talk about software freedom with you. I also have the honor of delivering the closing keynote and will participate in a panel about the high priorities project list. See you there!
Bart Massey on Why You Should Be a Conservancy Supporter
by on January 28, 2016
In this video, Bart Massey talks about why he is a passionate supporter of Conservancy. Bart discusses why he thinks Conservancy is relevant for the next 20 years of software freedom, tells you about his favorite Conservancy project and strongly encourages you to become a Conservancy Supporter.
(Also available on YouTube.)
I'm Running for the Linux Foundation Board of Directors
by on January 17, 2016
[This blog post received some press coverage. It's now unclear whether Linux community members can run for the Linux Foundation board. I will update here if I learn more. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols' article has a good overview of the situation. ]
As we begin a new year, I'm super excited that Conservancy has almost reached our initial target of 750 Supporters (we're just 4 Supporters away from this goal! If you haven't signed up, you can push us past this first milestone!). We launched our Supporter program over a year ago and more recently, in November, we asked you all to become Supporters now so that Conservancy can survive. Conservancy is moving toward a funding model primarily from individuals rather than larger corporate sponsors. While we are about to reach our minimal target, we still have a long way to go to our final goal of 2,500 Supporters — which will allow us to continue all of Conservancy's critical programs, including copyleft enforcement. Many individuals have come forward to donate, and we hope that many more of you do so too! I was really excited about the statement of support published last week by the GNOME Foundation, and in particular their point that enforcement is necessary and benefits GNOME and free software as a whole.
Of course, we're still excited about our for-profit sponsors, and list them at the top of our sponsors page. We'd like to draw particular attention to Private Internet Access, which gave a generous match so that individuals who join this month will double their donations via the match. We have only two weeks left to take advantage of this, so if you are considering donating, please do it soon!
Conservancy is focusing on individual giving via our Supporter campaign because our organization has a very special and unique status, called 501(c)(3) charity status here in the US. That means that Conservancy's constituency is the general public. We do the jobs in the software freedom community that maximize the rights of the general public in the use and development of their software.
We're glad that so many support us in doing those jobs for public good. But Conservancy doesn't imagine that we can do all the jobs in our community. In fact, there's a definite need for companies to have an organization that specifically represents their interests in the software freedom community. In my view, the organization that does the job best is the Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation is a 501(c)(6) trade association, so they advocate ultimately for the common business interest of their members. I've been impressed at Linux Foundation's growth and their increasing ability to market Linux and related free software technologies to new companies; no organization does more to encourage companies to adopt Linux than Linux Foundation.
While trade associations like Linux Foundation usually represent only companies, Linux Foundation seeks to do even more. I've talked a lot, including just a few days ago, with Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin. He often points out how, while there is no public-good mandate for trade associations, nothing stops trade associations from doing work in the public good, since that often does align with the needs of their corporate members. In particular, Linux Foundation did something great to deliver on that idea — unlike most other trade associations, Linux Foundation by laws allow for two Board Seats elected by individuals.1 This gives individuals a minority voice on their Board of Directors, so that companies that control Linux Foundation's board has a direct path to hear for the community.
I signed up last year as an Individual Affiliate of Linux Foundation and nominated myself as a candidate for Linux Foundation's Board of Directors. At my Linaro Connect keynote in late September, I publicly announced my candidacy for the 2016 Linux Foundation Board of Directors. If elected, I look forward to the opportunity to give feedback and help directly with Jim's commitment to help Linux Foundation do good things not just for its corporate members, but for all individuals, too. While Linux Foundation has not yet announced when this years' elections will occur, I hope all Individual LF Affiliates will watch for the election and vote for me. I'll of course update the community here on when I know more about the details.
While the focus of my work is at Conservancy, I really believe that all of us should give time to other organizations in the community to make all of them better. Conservancy announced in the last two years multiple collaborations (such as our GPL enforcement principles and copyleft.org) with the Free Software Foundation, and I have long provided pro-bono legal counsel to both the FSF, GNOME Foundation and Question Copyright, in addition to my job at Conservancy. I also try to contribute whenever I can to the GNOME engagement team. While I do believe prioritizing volunteer work for charities is ideal, I also see an opportunity here, as I said in my Linaro keynote, to help companies understand the needs and mindset of community and non-commercial developers who also collaborate on key software freedom projects. I hope that platform will find resonance with Linux Foundation's Individual Affiliates, and I ask for their votes.
1 This link on Linux Foundation's website broke a few days after I posted this blog post. The link in the main post is to the Google Cached version for now.
