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Conservancy Blog
Displaying posts tagged Outreachy
On the Recent Announcement by FSF's Board of Directors
by on March 23, 2021
In response to Sunday's announcement by the Free Software Foundation, we ceased our few remaining activities that intersect directly with the FSF. Most notably, our Outreachy member project exited the FSF from participating in that program — both through mentorship and sponsorship. One project participant in Outreachy's May 2021 round planned to rely on FSF funding. We will not accept those funds from the FSF, and instead Conservancy will pay for that intern ($6,500) from our own general funds. It is my deepest hope that these actions, along with others all over the FOSS community, will catalyze much needed changes at the FSF.
Conservancy support is critical to Outreachy
by on December 29, 2020
The pandemic and other events in 2020 has disrupted all our lives. Many people have to choose between facing financial hardship, or putting themselves at risk to physically go to work.
That's why I'm so proud to work on Outreachy. Outreachy provides remote internships, allowing people to work safely from home. Outreachy interns work on free software projects, and our goal is to increase diversity in software freedom.
Outreachy's remote internships are crucial to helping attract and retain women free software, especially during a pandemic. NPR reported that women are leaving the workplace at four times the rate of men during the pandemic. This is partially because society pushes women to be the primary caregiver for children. Many women have been forced to choose between working and supporting their children.
Outreachy is proud to support parents during the pandemic. Our remote internship program means that parents don't have to choose between supporting their kids and pursuing a job working on free software. We're so proud of Outreachy interns who are mothers, like Guadalupe Arroyo, who was able to be an Outreachy intern and care for her toddler. Guadalupe was an Outreachy May 2020 intern with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. We're also proud of Lalitha, a 54 year-old mom who learned how to code after immigrating to America from India. Lalitha was an Outreachy May 2020 intern with Wikimedia.
Outreachy is proud to support people who are switching careers into tech. We're proud of Will Gutierrez, a trans Filipino, who got his first job in tech as an Outreachy intern! Will worked in many different careers before Outreachy, including as a suicide prevention counselor, cook, poet & playwright, and youth fishing & crabbing instructor. Will taught himself JavaScript through the online open source educational site, FreeCodeCamp. Will is a December 2020 Outreachy intern working with Public Lab.
Outreachy is also proud to support people in developing countries. This year, we accepted our largest internship cohort from African countries! In the December 2020 cohort, 19 out of 54 Outreachy interns are from African countries like Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda.
As word about Outreachy continues to spread around the world, our program becomes increasingly complex. It is a daunting task to handle tax forms and payments for over one hundred people per year!
It would be impossible to run Outreachy and do all of this good work without the support of Software Freedom Conservancy. Conservancy does much more than just provide a non-profit status for Outreachy. It's our fiscal parent, and our non-profit home. Conservancy goes above and beyond to help Outreachy. Conservancy staff promote Outreachy, help us find grants, navigate legal challenges, and vet mentoring communities.
Running an international free software mentoring program would be impossible without Conservancy's expertise, advice, and support. Outreachy is so grateful for Conservancy staff for their support.
Outreachy is also essential to Software Freedom Conservancy. Conservancy believes that anyone should be able to use, modify, distribute, and contribute to free software. Conservancy believes that everyone should have software freedom, especially people from marginalized communities. Conservancy is proud to support Outreachy.
I'm so thankful that Conservancy has worked with the Outreachy team to hire me to work full-time on Outreachy. It's the first time Conservancy has hired an employee on staff to work full-time on a member project. Even as a dedicated Outreachy employee, I'm now an integrated part of Conservancy staff. I can see how proud Conservancy is to do our part to create diverse and inclusive free software communities.
As Conservancy's newest staff member, I encourage you to donate to Software Freedom Conservancy's fundraiser. We are so close to hitting our goal for 2020. It's exciting to see so many people support Conservancy, and I hope you can too! Please consider becoming a Conservancy supporter today.
Software Freedom Work During the Pandemic
by on April 21, 2020
Most of us have already gotten many, many emails talking about how fast food chains, companies that sell sweatpants and soap makers are "here for you" especially, "in these troubled times." Some of those are heartfelt emails assuring you that their company is making donations to non-profits or that they are really, really, washing everything. Non-profits, while we are also "here for you" especially, "in these troubled times" generally have more to do during a crisis so we've been focusing on our work while going a bit light on our marketing.
Conservancy's communities have responded to the global pandemic in several ways. Firstly, we are all grateful for the global, remote free software community -- particularly as many key events are being cancelled or transforming into online experiences. Many of us are looking at how to better serve the people who count on us, either by improving the tools we offer or our support, or both. Here's a sampling of what our projects are doing during the pandemic.
Working Together
Etherpad recently rolled out video support. It was already in the works, but it couldn't be more timely as many, many more people look for remote collaboration tools that respect their freedom. We've tried it out with as many as six people and you get a collaborative space for document editing (minutes, statement, shared story, etc.) as well as a sidebar with everyone's faces reacting in real time — very nice!
Conservancy also houses three (3!) version control systems. There's never been more demand for efficient tooling to manage remote, asynchronous collaboration. Git, Darcs and Mercurial are ready to help you work together, remotely.
Common Workflow language has been participating in biohackathons, more information on that work can be found here.
Remote Internships
Outreachy provided remote paid internships to work on free and open source software, inviting anyone who faces under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the technology industry of their country to apply. The pandemic has exacerbated societal inequities such that people who have stable tech jobs are able to weather this crisis from the safety of their homes, while less resourced people are forced to choose between having an income and safety from the virus. And of course, it's not a great time to look for intro-level opportunities, let alone remote ones that could lead to a career with working on free software. Outreachy is looking to provide as many internships as possible in the coming May round to help bring more opportunities to marginalized people when they're needed most. Additionally, Outreachy has lowered the hours requirement for interns and mentors, to make the intership more accessible to those who have additional care-giving or just increased emotional overhead during the global pandemic. Outreachy typically has provided a travel stipend to interns. Because travel is no longer safe or recommended, the Outreachy team has decided to officially cancel all travel and pay all outstanding travel stipends, which they hope will help their alumns cope with this difficult time. The Outreachy team could use your help -- making the upcoming round bigger will be tough while some funding sources are contracting. We encourage companies to sponsor Outreachy interns, and anyone whose financial situation is not impacted by the current crisis to make an individual donation.
LibreHealth and Qemu are both mentoring Outreachy interns who will get paid to work on free software, remotely (as always) this summer. Boost, Coreboot, Godot, Inkscape, Qemu, Sugar Labs, Wine and Xapian are all taking part in Google Summer of Code -- another critical remote internship opportunity that brings new people in to the free software community. Disasters tend to exacerbate the impact of existing inequalities, making things hard for newcomers. Mentoring new free software contributors, and paying them while they work and learn, is more important than ever.
Control Over Our Computing
Many folks have been trying to get work or school software functioning on their home computers for the first time this past month and are newly grateful for the important interoperability bridges that Homebrew and Wine maintain. Wine just released updates and bug fixes a week ago, while we've been working with Homebrew to ensure that their paid contractors are well-supported with proper hardware during lockdown.
As we incorporate technology more intimately into our lives, with networked devices being a lifeline to work, school, friends and family, it's never been more important to make sure we control the technology we rely on. Our team is also continuing to work on GPL compliance, making sure that companies who use copylefted software keep up their end of the deal. Having access to source code and being able to modify the software on our devices can help us limit surveillance and other predatory behavior by companies who know that their customers have little choice if they want devices that provide a lifeline in this difficult time.
Finally, it can't always be all about work. As we enter the *second* month of lockdown in many places, video games are providing an important escape for people who are staying at home. Godot helps folks create new games without having to worry about proprietary licenses. With Conservancy's help, the Godot team has been using community driven funding to make Godot better and better.
We hope you're keeping well and staying healthy!
Last Week in Brussels: FOSDEM, Copyleft Conf and More
by on February 10, 2020
FOSDEM
FOSDEM is a great volunteer-run, community-driven event that has been going on for twenty years!! Conservancy staff and volunteers who attend the event are grateful to have the opportunity to interact with so many passionate free software advocates in one place each year.
The FOSDEM organizers invited Bradley and Karen to speak on the main track talk — the next installment talk on the difficulty in living in software freedom and making ethical choices today — a follow-up to their keynote from last year.
Conservancy staff also gave some DevRoom talks, including participating in the one-of-a-kind debates in the Legal & Policy DevRoom this year. Nearly all of these recordings are now available. The FOSDEM video team is amazingly efficient — with a fully FOSS system for conference video!
The well-attended Legal & Policy DevRoom (which Bradley and Karen help organize each year) occurred all day on Saturday. In the morning, Bradley participated in a debate entitled, Does Careful Inventory of Licensing Bill of Materials Have Real Impact on FOSS License Compliance? The debate format was an exciting new addition to the DevRoom this year. (Please note that per the debate format, some speakers took positions that did not necessarily reflect their personal or organizational views.)
On Sunday, Deb spoke about Building Ethical Software Under Capitalism, in the Community Devroom. Later that day in the same room, Bradley Kuhn discussed, How Does Innersource Impact on the Future of Upstream Contributions?.
On Sunday, Conservancy welcomed attendees to learn more about our organization at our booth. We thank our volunteers who greeted and discussed Conservancy's work with attendees; we appreciate your energy. Also, thanks to the many Outreachy alums (all of whom are still participating in FOSS!) who stopped by the booth — it's really gratifying to hear from you. One current intern even asked for a selfie with our staff!
Many of our member projects were also at FOSDEM. Coreboot ran a shared booth, Homebrew had their second in-person meeting on Monday and Godot had a booth and helped run the Gaming Development track.
Godot also hosted two pre-conference sprint days and a two day “FOSDEM Fringe” event — GodotCon.Copyleft Conf
Photo is by Deb Nicholson and is available under a CC-BY-SA-4.0 license
We ran the Second Annual Copyleft Conf on Monday. The event sparked lively and respectful conversations about the use and future of copyleft. The event included an exciting, multi-faceted schedule of talks and panels. Our lovely program committee — Molly de Blanc, Nithya Ruff, Harald Welte, Josh Simmons, Beth Flanagan, Bradley Kuhn and Deb Nicholson — curated and selected excellent content for the day. Thanks also to our Copyleft Conf volunteers, who helped with registration, speaker introductions and time-keeping.
All the Copyleft Conf sessions and Deb's CHAOSS Con keynote (a Friday “FOSDEM Fringe” event), Ethics: What You Know & What You Don't Know should be posted within a few weeks.
