Software Freedom Conservancy
Software Freedom Conservancy is a not-for-profit charity that helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Conservancy provides a non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects. This allows FLOSS developers to focus on what they do best — writing and improving FLOSS for the general public — while Conservancy takes care of the projects' needs that do not relate directly to software development and documentation.
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An Overview of Conservancy… Conservancy's current member projects… Services Conservancy provides to its member projects… Conservancy's unique work defending and upholding copyleft licenses (e.g., the GPL) … Conservancy's Non-Profit Accounting Project …
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Recent News
March 2, 2016
Thanks to Private Internet Access and 416 New Supporters!
Conservancy is thrilled to announce that it has fully earned a generous $50,000 match donation by Private Internet Access. In order to earn the match, Conservancy needed to sign up (or renew) 416 Supporters in just over two months. Conservancy got there with just a few hours to spare. Also during the same time, an anonymous donor sponsored an additional match exclusively for attendees of Linux Conf AU 2016 in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. Using both matches, 19 new Supporters tripled their donations!
February 29, 2016
Hellwig's VMware Case Moves Forward With Hearing Last Week
Last Thursday, 24 February 2016, a hearing was held in Berlin regarding Christoph Hellwig's case against VMware regarding infringement of his Linux copyrights. Our own Bradley M. Kuhn and world-famous Linux developer and GPL enforcer Harald Welte both posted their thoughts regarding the hearing. Welte attended the hearing as an observer and reports first-hand on what he saw and heard.
February 23, 2016
Conservancy's Executive Director Testifies in Favor of NYC Free and Open Source Software Acts
Software Freedom Conservancy's Executive Director, Karen Sandler was invited to offer testimony earlier today to the New York City Council Committee on Contracts. Sandler testified in favor of the Free and Open Source Software Act and the Civic Commons Act, both proposed by Council Member Ben Kallos, which would increase the use of free and open source software by New York City departments and agencies. Sandler made the case for the superiority of free software, pointing out the advantages it would provide the city and society in general. “Companies effectively hold governments hostage with proprietary software,” Sandler explained. A full copy of the testimony is available.
Conservancy Blog
The VMware Hearing and the Long Road Ahead
Posted by Bradley M. Kuhn on February 29, 2016
On last Thursday, Christoph Hellwig and his legal counsel attended a hearing in Hellwig's VMware case that Conservancy currently funds. Harald Welte, world famous for his GPL enforcement work in the early 2000s, also attended as an observer and wrote an excellent summary. I'd like to highlight a few parts of his summary, in the context of Conservancy's past litigation experience regarding the GPL.
Read More from Bradley on this…
GPL Violations Related to Combining ZFS and Linux
Posted by Bradley M. Kuhn and Karen M. Sandler on February 25, 2016
This post discusses an atypical GPL violation. Unlike most GPL violations Conservancy faces, in this case, a third-party entity holds a magic wand that can instantly resolve the situation. Oracle is the primary copyright holder of ZFS, and, despite nearly eight years (going back to the days of Sun's control of the code) of the anti-license-proliferation community's urging, Oracle continues to license their code under their own, GPL-incompatible license. While this violation has many facets, and Oracle did not themselves violate GPL in this specific case, they hold the keys to this particular kingdom and they forbid the Linux community to enter. While there are complexities that we must address, in this context, Oracle could make everyone's life easier by waving their magic relicensing wand. Nevertheless, until they do, since GPL-incompatible licenses are the root of all GPL violations, combinations of GPL'd code with Oracle's GPL-incompatible code yield GPL violations, such as the ongoing violation by Canonical, Ltd.
