Bart Massey on Why You Should Be a Conservancy Supporter

by Karen Sandler 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.)

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Tags: conservancy, supporter

Key Charities That Advance Software Freedom Are Worthy of Your Urgent Support

by Bradley M. Kuhn on January 25, 2016

I've had the pleasure and the privilege, for the last 20 years, to be either a volunteer or employee of the two most important organizations for the advance of software freedom and users' rights to copy, share, modify and redistribute software. In 1996, I began volunteering for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and worked as its Executive Director from 2001–2005. I continued as a volunteer for the FSF since then, and now serve as a volunteer on FSF's Board of Directors. I was also one of the first volunteers for Software Freedom Conservancy when we founded it in 2006, and I was the primary person doing the work of the organization as a volunteer from 2006–2010. I've enjoyed having a day job as a Conservancy employee since 2011.

These two organizations have been the center of my life's work. Between them, I typically spend 50–80 hours every single week doing a mix of paid and volunteer work. Both my hobby and my career are advancing software freedom.

I choose to give my time and work to these organizations because they provide the infrastructure that make my work possible. The Free Software community has shown that the work of many individuals, who care deeply about a cause but cooperate together toward a common goal, has an impact greater than any individuals can ever have working separately. The same is often true for cooperating organizations: charities, like Conservancy and the FSF, that work together with each other amplify their impact beyond the expected.

Both Conservancy and the FSF pursue specific and differing approaches and methods to the advancement of software freedom. The FSF is an advocacy organization that raises awareness about key issues that impact the future of users' freedoms and rights, and finds volunteers and pays staff to advocate about these issues. Conservancy is a fiscal sponsor, which means one of our key activities is operational work, meeting the logistical and organizational needs of volunteers so they can focus on the production of great Free Software and Free Documentation. Meanwhile, both Conservancy and FSF dedicated themselves to sponsoring software projects: the FSF through the GNU project, and Conservancy through its member projects. And, most importantly, both charities stand up for the rights of users by enforcing and defending copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL.

Conservancy and the FSF show in concrete terms that two charities can work together to increase their impact. Last year, our organizations collaborated on many projects, such as the proposed FCC rule changes for wireless devices, jointly handled a GPL enforcement action against Canonical, Ltd., published the principles of community-oriented GPL enforcement, and continued our collaboration on copyleft.org. We're already discussing lots of ways that the two organizations can work together in 2016!

I'm proud to give so much of my time and energy to both these excellent organizations. But, I also give my money as well: I was the first person in history to become an Associate Member of the FSF (back in November 2002), and have gladly paid my monthly dues since then. Today, I also signed up as an annual Supporter of Conservancy, because I'm want to ensure that Conservancy's meets its current pledge match — the next 215 Supporters who sign up before January 31st will double their donation via the match.

For just US$20 each month, you make sure the excellent work of both these organizations can continue. This is quite a deal: if you are employed, University-educated professional living in the industrialized world, US$20 is probably the same amount you'd easily spend on a meals at restaurants or other luxuries. Isn't it even a better luxury to know that these two organizations can have employ a years' worth of effort of standing up for your software freedom in 2016? You can make the real difference by making your charitable contribution to these two organizations today:

• Conservancy's Supporter program
• FSF's Associate Membership program

Please don't wait: both fundraising deadlines are just six days away!

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Tags: conservancy, supporter

I'm Running for the Linux Foundation Board of Directors

by Karen Sandler 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.

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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.

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Tags: conservancy, GPL, supporter

2015 YIR: Laying a Foundation for Growing Outreachy

by Marina Zhurakhinskaya on December 31, 2015

[ This blog post is the fifth in our series, Conservancy 2015: Year in Review. ]

Marina Zhurakhinskaya, one of the coordinators of Conservancy's Outreachy program, writes about all the exciting things that happened in Outreachy's first year in its new home at Conservancy.

2015 was a year of transition and expansion for Outreachy, which was only possible with the fiscal and legal support Conservancy provided us. Becoming a Conservancy Supporter will ensure the future in which more free software success stories like Outreachy's are possible.

Outreachy helps people from groups underrepresented in free software get involved through paid, mentored, remote internships with a variety of free software projects. After successfully growing as the GNOME Foundation project for four years, Outreachy needed a new home which could support its further growth, be designed to work with a multitude of free software projects, and provide extensive accounting services. With the current participation numbers of about 35 interns and 15 sponsoring organizations a round, and two rounds a year, Outreachy requires processing about 210 intern payments and 30 sponsor invoices a year. Additionally, Outreachy requires processing travel reimbursements, preparing tax documents, and providing letters of participation for some interns. Legal entity hosting Outreachy needs to enter into participation agreements with interns and mentors, as well as into custom sponsorship agreements with some sponsors.

In February, Outreachy announced its transition to Conservancy and adopted its current name. The alternative of creating its own non-profit was prohibitive because of the overhead and time commitment that would have required. Conservancy was a perfect new home, which provided a lot of the services Outreachy needed and allowed seamlessly continuing the program throughout 2015. The transition to Conservancy was completed in May. 30 interns were accepted for the May-August round with Karen Sandler, Sarah Sharp, and Marina Zhurakhinskaya serving as Outreachy's Project Leadership Committee and coordinators.

With the program's needs met, we were able to turn our minds to expanding the reach of the program. In September, Outreachy announced the expantion to people of color underrepresented in tech in the U.S., while continuing to be open to cis and trans women, trans men, and genderqueer people worldwide. This expansion was guided by the lack of diversity revealed by the employee demographic data released by many leading U.S. tech companies. Three new cooridinators, Cindy Pallares-Quezada, Tony Sebro, and Bryan Smith joined Karen Sandler, Sarah Sharp, and Marina Zhurakhinskaya to help with the expansion. 37 interns were accepted for the December-March round.

One of the most important measures of success for Outreachy is its alums speaking at free software conferences. In 2015, 27 alums had full-time sessions at conferences such as linux.conf.au, LibrePlanet, FOSSASIA, OpenStack Summit, Open Source Bridge, FISL, and LinuxCon. Isabel Jimenez gave a keynote about the benefits of contributing to open source at All Things Open. In a major recognition for an Outreachy alum, Yan Zhu was named among the women to watch in IT security by SC Magazine.

Outreachy coordinators are also being recognized for their contributions to free and open source software. Sarah Sharp won the inaugural Women in Open Source Award, sponsored by Red Hat, and generously donated her stipend to Outreachy. Marina Zhurakhinskaya won an O'Reilly Open Source Award.

Outreachy coordinators, mentors, and alums promoted Outreachy and diversity in free and open source software in the following articles and conference sessions:

• Karen Sandler spoke about Outreachy in her FOSDEM and FISL keynotes

• Marina Zhurakhinskaya moderated and Cindy Pallares-Quezada participated in the panel about opportunities in open source at the ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing

• Mentor and former career advisor Sumana Harihareswara wrote about the triumph of Outreachy, with examples from its history

• Alum Sucheta Ghoshal spoke about her experience with Outreachy at LibrePlanet and alums Jessica Canepa, Barbara Miller, and Adam Okoye spoke about their experience with Outreachy at Open Source Bridge

• Linux kernel coordinator Julia Lawall moderated the panel on Outreachy internships with the Linux kernel at LinuxCon North America; panel participants included Karen Sandler, mentors Greg Kroah-Hartman, Jes Sorensen, and Konrad Wilk, and alums Lidza Louina, Lisa Nguyen, and Elena Ufimtseva

• Marina Zhurakhinskaya was interviewed about Outreachy and her other diversity work by Opensource.com and, for the Ada Lovelace Day, by the Free Software Foundation

• Weaving their work on Outreachy into their greater involvement in free software diversity efforts, Sarah Sharp wrote about what makes a good community on her blog, Marina Zhurakhinskaya gave a keynote on effective outreach at Fossetcon, and Cindy Pallares-Quezada wrote an article on diversity in open source highlights from 2015 for Opensource.com

Outreachy is made possible thanks to the contributions of its many coordinators, mentors, and sponsors. For May and December rounds, with the credit given for the highest level of sponsorship, Intel and Mozilla sponsored Outreachy at the Ceiling Smasher level, Red Hat at the Equalizer level, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Linux Foundation, and OpenStack Foundation at the Promoter level, and Cadasta, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Endless, Free Software Foundation, GNOME, Goldman Sachs, IBM, M-Lab, Mapbox, Mapzen, Mifos, Open Source Robotics Foundation, Perl, Samsung, Twitter, VideoLAN, Wikimedia Foundation, and Xen Project at the Includer level. Additionally, Red Hat supports Outreachy by contributing Marina Zhurakhinskaya's time towards the organization of the program and the GNOME Foundation provides infrastructure support. However, first and foremost, Outreachy is possible thanks to Conservancy being in place to be its non-profit home and handle the fiscal and legal needs of the program.

Conservancy's service of helping free software projects establish a foundation for growth without the prohibitive overhead of creating their own non-profits is a cornerstone of the free software community. We need Conservancy securely in place to continue providing exceptional support for its 33 member projects and to offer this support to new projects. To help free software thrive, please join Outreachy's Project Leadership Committee members Karen Sandler, Sarah Sharp, and Marina Zhurakhinskaya in becoming a Conservancy Supporter.

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Tags: conservancy, Year In Review 2015