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Conservancy BlogDisplaying posts
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by on December 17, 2019
This week we are interviewing Mark Wielaard, one of the excellent people who is supporting our annual fundraiser by putting up matching funds. This year's match is our biggest yet! We've been challenged to match a total of $113,093. Donations help us support and protect free software alternatives and grow a bold software freedom movement where everyone is welcome.
Photo at GNU Tools Cauldron 2017, courtesy of Mark Wielaard.
Mark Wielaard has a been a free software developer and advocate for a long time! He started out helping liberate Java as GNU Classpath maintainer and over the past twenty years, he has spoken publicly about his work to improve the experience of using critical free software tools including GCC and glibc and the DWARF debugging tools, elfutils and Valgrind. He's a senior principal software engineer at Red Hat working in the Engineering Tools group. Mark is passionate about building a software freedom movement that is inclusive and as bug-free as possible. He is not a huge fan of interviews, but generously agreed to answer a few questions for us anyway. Thanks, Mark!
1. What do you think is the biggest threat to software freedom today?
Centralized, non-open-standards based, communication and collaboration platforms. Personally I am perfectly happy using just email and irc. For all my personal needs I can now use my personal computer using free software. I have used a Firefox OS based phone in the past, but don't generally use a "smartphone". If you restrict yourself like that then it totally looks like we have won. There is this happy little community that has total control over their own computing. But it is a bubble. And it is getting harder and harder to get out. There are so many people who depend on communicating (and collaborating) with each other through these large centralized systems which only have proprietary (javascript) clients. It feels like it is getting harder and harder to bridge the gap.
2. What do you think free software projects should be paying more attention to over the next few years?
Besides figuring out what to do about those centralized communication/collaboration platforms I think Reproducible Builds (a Conservancy project) is really important. Even if you use only free software, you are still vulnerable to software supply chain attacks -- unless you audit and build all the software yourself. But everybody ultimately uses some binary builds produced by someone else. Reproducible Builds allow users to collaboratively "challenge" the provider of their binaries -- to trust, but verify.
3. Which Conservancy projects do you use?
As a hacker my current workflow is largely based around Git, Qemu, and Buildbot. But all Conservancy projects are useful (or just plain fun) in various situations. People really should check out the member list. If you used one of the projects and it was useful, consider hitting the Donate button.
4. Do you talk to family and friends about free software? If so, where do you usually start?
They will probably tell you I talk too much about it. These days it is easier because people very much realize they are no longer in control of their own computing devices. Sadly, software and computing have become synonymous with tracking and spyware. For their desktop or laptop I can mostly provide some free software solution. But not having much experience with mobile devices I often struggle to suggest good free software solutions there, except to suggest to avoid them if possible. Most people have become too dependent on their mobile devices to just not use them anymore.
5. Finally, what caused you to step up as a matcher for Conservancy this year?
Conservancy supports many software freedom causes and projects to which I could never productively contribute directly myself. Giving money is my indirect way to contribute. I believe it is important that Conservancy is supported by as many individuals as possible, so they can stay independent. Hopefully, the matching program inspires even more people to join, so that Conservancy can provide community projects a home where they can produce even more Software Freedom for all of us.
Participate in the match and have your donation doubled through the generosity of folks like Mark, today!
by on September 20, 2019
Conservancy's Executive Director Karen Sandler delivered the keynote address on Saturday 2019-09-21 at the 2019 State of the Map Conference in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. State of the Map is the annual conference for all mappers and OpenStreetMap users.
Karen's keynote was recorded and is available on the CCC media server!
Karen discussed her personal journey in software freedom, the challenges we all face maintaining lives of software freedom, and how that relates to the freedom of maps and navigation software.
by on September 11, 2019
Updates from many of our projects' departing summer interns, updates on what our contractors have been up to and pictures from recent events.
Picture is available under a CC.BY license and was taken by Sarah Withee
Picture is available under a CC.BY licenses and was taken by Zach Harris
Picture is available under a CC.BY.SA license and was taken by Deb Nicholson
Picture is available under a CC.BY.SA license and was taken by Deb Nicholson
Recent Videos and Pictures
Our Executive Director, Karen Sandler, is going to be part of an upcoming French documentary about the global fight for software freedom. The English version will be titled "Hackers For The Commons" and you can already check out the trailer (along with a fundraiser for the English version), right here. There are a few upcoming screenings scheduled of the French version.
Check out these two pictures from Karen's Abstractions talk last month! (top)
Deb held a "Supporters & Friends" event during GUADEC. Check out these nice pictures of folks talking about software freedom in Thessaloniki! (below)Upcoming talks from staff
Bradley is keynoting the 8th edition of Kernel Recipes in Paris on September 26 & 27. Conservancy is also this year's featured non-profit beneficiary. Registration opened this week.
Karen will be keynoting State of the Map in Heidelberg in September, on Saturday, September 21st.
Deb is speaking about "Selenium and Conservancy" at Selenium Conf this October.
Deb is also co-presenting with Nithya Ruff (the Head of Comcast’s Open Source Program Office) at All Things Open on "Companies and Communities: Why Can't We All Just Get Along?"
Interns are wrapping up for the summer
Also, applications are currently being accepted for the next round! Outreachy internships are remote, paid ($5,500 stipend), and last three months. Initial applications for the Dec 2019 to Mar 2020 internships are due on Sep 24 at 4pm UTC. Please help us reach folks who could benefit from an internship by sharing with your networks!
Conservancy contractors have been working hard
Lots happening at Reproducible Builds, including more work on diffoscope, new variations in their testing framework.
Over at phpMyAdmin, in addition to the intern that was sponsored directly through Conservancy, work focused on the request router and time with the Google Summer of Code interns who both wrapped up and reported on their work this summer, here and here.
Clojurists Together started work on four new projects. You can read about them all here.
Loads of fresh code!
Member Projects: Fall is for learning
Thanks to Chris Lamby for promoting Conservancy with complimentary beer mats at the recent Debian BBQ!
by on August 30, 2019
In 2013, Conservancy helped resolve a GPL violation by Samsung which arose primarily due to complications around Microsoft's patent holdings related to the exFAT filesystem. At the time, Microsoft was known for demanding patent fees from Linux users and redistributors.
Late last year, Microsoft joined Open Invention Network. As we wrote at the time, this action had limited impact, as key patents like exFAT were not implemented in any packages that were part of OIN's “Linux System Definition”. We asked Microsoft at the time to upstream the exFAT code under GPLv2-or-later to confirm its intention to end patent aggression.
This week, in response to recent follow-up requests from upstream Linux developers, Microsoft announced that they would sign off on inclusion of exFAT in upstream Linux. This is the first step toward real patent peace related to exFAT.
This process for exFAT will only complete once all of the following happen: the exFAT patch appears in an official Linux release, that official Linux release becomes part of OIN's Linux System Definition (this generally happens automatically, as future versions of Linux are included by default), and Microsoft distributes a copy of Linux themselves that contains this technology. This last step is critical, as the OIN patent license is not as comprehensive as a full patent license from Microsoft. Any participating company can withdraw at any time from OIN1 (and there have been several withdrawals in the past, including Oracle, Facebook, HP and Symantec). After a transition period, the safety of OIN's non-aggression pact weakens. In contrast, when a company distributes software under the GPL, there is an irrevocable implicit patent license with the distribution, and GPLv2§7 further assures patent licensing safety.
Eventually, Microsoft will likely distribute a version of Linux containing exFAT to its Azure users and in its Windows Subsystem for Linux. However, until that occurs, the issue is not really resolved. An expedient solution is as we previously requested: that Microsoft bring definitive patent safety to free and open source software by publicly granting a permanent patent license for all patents Microsoft holds that read on Linux. Additionally, we invite Microsoft to keep pace with its peers such as Google and Red Hat, who years ago made very public patent promises to FOSS users. While the actions taken thus far are intermediary steps, I applaud Microsoft's journey from being a company that long attacked FOSS to becoming a contributor.
1 The legal mechanism for withdrawal is exercise of a “Limitation Election” in the OIN patent license agreement.
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