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Conservancy Blog
Displaying posts tagged supporter
Chris Neugebauer, chair of North Bay Python, encourages you to Support Conservancy
by on December 23, 2017
Earlier this month, Software Freedom Conservancy helped North Bay Python 2017 complete an excellent Python conference focused on Free and Open Source Software for Python. As with all our member projects, they succeed because of our excellent collaboration between volunteers and Conservancy staff to make sure all the work gets done right.
In this video, Christopher Neubaugher, conference chair of North Bay Python 2017 and a Conservancy Supporter, encourages you to become a Conservancy Supporter today. And, today's a great day to do it! Your donation will be doubled by our current match campaign.
Conservancy’s Member Projects Ask for Your Support
by on December 8, 2017
Outreachy, North Bay Python, LibreHealth, Sugar, Wine, Linux XIA, Xapian, Homebrew, and Git all ask you to support Conservancy. Become a Supporter today while your donation counts twice!
Donor Spotlight: Mark Wielaard
by on October 2, 2017
Conservancy depends on our Supporters and Donors. We rely on their financial support, of course, but they are also valued ambassadors who spread the word about Conservancy and the work we do. We continue our series featuring the companies and individuals who support Conservancy. If you're a Supporter of Conservancy and would like to be featured here please let us know!
This time, we're interviewing Mark Wielaard. Mark is a long-time free software developer. He was very involved in the libre java community in the early 2000's, spending many years as the maintainer of GNU Classpath , GNU's implementation the standard library for the java programming language. It took a long time, but he is happy that these days the Java Trap has been mostly dismantled. He still helps with the infrastructure for the IcedTea project, a free software community and collection of tools around core libre java compilers, runtimes and libraries. But his current work is mainly focused on analyzing and debugging natively compiled code. He contributes to Valgrind and elfutils to help make that possible.
Why do you support Conservancy?
Software Freedom Conservancy provides free software projects with a home. I like that, and I think it's important. GNU Classpath had a home in GNU, and a community, and as the maintainer that made me really happy. It meant that we could concentrate on what we loved to do, hacking code together. But with the knowledge that we had a fallback if we needed to deal with anything that couldn't be solved by just adding a bit more code. A place for all the administration that doesn't just fit in the code repository. I hope it makes other free software developers happy too, to have a place for their projects they can call home.
What makes Conservancy a good home for free software projects?
I trust Conservancy to support communities in a way that respects both the developers and software freedom. Free software is a good basis for people to collaborate. The services that Conservancy provides allow communities to concentrate on improving software together. Freeing project leaders from the stress that is involved when being personally responsible for all the non-coding activities. Individuals (and companies) can then join on equal terms, making sure the project and community will work together for the public benefit (and just having fun together hacking on code).
Why do you trust Conservancy to do that work?
Conservancy consists of people with experience, who care. I know Bradley Kuhn because he was the Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation when I worked on GNU Classpath. Having someone who takes care of all the administrative paperwork, someone you could forward tricky legal questions to, had a big impact. It meant we could all just concentrate on coding together. And everyone involved with Conservancy, staff and directors have years of experience with various Free Software projects and foundations. They really know what communities need to keep focussed on doing the thing developers love most, hacking on code.
Conservancy is unique in that it allows projects to define their own terms and conditions for how the community works together. Projects aren't forced to adopt a particular license, governance structure or tools and they aren't controlled by corporate sponsors. And another unique feature of the Conservancy is that they prepare from the start for projects to leave again. If a projects outgrows its home at the Conservancy it has the freedom to leave and setup their home somewhere else.
Anything else?
The Software Freedom Conservancy is now the home of a long list of diverse projects. I hope that more people will consider becoming a Conservancy Supporter so that more projects can call the Conservancy their home. With software controlling more and more of our daily lives it is important to provide a welcome home to communities that can provide us with more Software Freedom.Donor Spotlight: Togán Labs
by on August 23, 2017
Conservancy depends on our Supporters and Donors.We rely on their financial support, of course, but they are also valued ambassadors who spread the word about Conservancy and the work we do. This is the first installment in a series featuring the companies and individuals who support Conservancy. If you're a Supporter of Conservancy and would like to be featured here please let us know!
We're kicking off this series by interviewing Beth Flanagan, CTO and Co-Founder of Togán Labs about why they have chosen to donate to Conservancy.
What is Togán Labs?
Togán (pronounced Toe-gawn) Labs Ltd. is a small startup embedded services provider based in Cork, Ireland. We are the creators of Oryx Linux, an embedded Linux distribution based around the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded. Oryx incorporates a lightweight container runtime engine which brings the benefits of containerisation to the embedded sector without disrupting existing developer workflows. We are not just another startup. Our core philosophy is the belief that we can work, keep roofs over our heads and be responsible to our co-workers, our customers and our communities. It's not just an afterthought to us, it's designed into our company. Our board consists of 2/3rds women, our core development team is gender balanced, we require our co-workers to learn the Irish language (because without an economic basis the language will become even more endangered than it currently is).
We believe that our ethics make us a stronger company. And part of those ethics is our firm belief in open source, especially in copyleft compliance.
Why are you making this donation to Conservancy?
As IoT and embedded devices become more and more ubiquitous in our lives, it is vital that companies supplying these devices enable the consumer by providing them with complete, corresponding source. It's not just a legal obligation, it's a smart business decision. What happens when companies stop supporting firmware upgrades for devices currently on the market? We can't afford a billion devices out there with out of date firmware and no way for communities to provide community supported upgrade solutions. The work Conservancy and others do moves us towards better compliance in the embedded space.
As well, there are personal reasons I believe in the work Conservancy does. I don't have a university degree but have been a software developer for over two decades because of the existence of open source software. I learned to program because strong copyleft existed. Were it not for the ability to get source code, to understand how things worked under the hood, there is a good chance I would never have entered this industry.
Which of Conservancy's member projects do you rely on?
So many of them! As a company that provides an embedded system we certainly make a lot of use of git, uCLibC, coreboot, BusyBox, QEMU, Samba, boost and of course the kernel. As the original author of the Yocto Autobuilder, a BuildBot based CI solution for the Yocto Project, I made heavy use of BuildBot and Twisted.
How do you see the future of software freedom?
I believe we are at a very important crossroads and that it is vital that our communities, corporations and organizations start having open and honest discussions about what the future of open source looks like and what we, as communities, value. I believe in collaboration, both in open source development and open source processes. I want to see all stakeholders around open source compliance move forward towards that goal.
Why do you think folks should open up their own wallets and become Supporters of Conservancy?
I have built a career and a company around a few billion euro software ecosystem I downloaded 20+ years ago for free! This software was started and built by people who believed that software should be free and open and it is vital that this shared value is protected, both from a moral perspective and a business one. I believe that Conservancy is one of the many organisations working towards that goal and the work they do, from Outreachy to compliance activities, enhances and enables our ability to deliver on the promise that is open source.
