{% include "opengraph_partial.html" with url="/sustainer/" title="Support Conservancy!" description="Software freedom is critical to many of today’s most pressing social issues, but it’s only effective when FOSS is for everyone. Support Conservancy today to help make that happen!" %}
<p>We are so proud that we're funded by individuals and stay unbeholden to corporate interests and pressures. We stand up for developers, consumers and those who have been historically excluded. We work to make technology truly fair for all. </p>
<li>Standing up for consumer rights in <ahref="/copyleft-compliance/">copyleft compliance</a></li>
<li>Supporting <ahref="https://outreachy.org">Outreachy</a> with its increasing number of interns</li>
<li>Bringing <ahref="/vizio">legal action against prolific license violators</a></li>
<li>Hiring team members to get projects <ahref="https://reproducible-builds.org/news/">like Reproducible Builds</a> to continue pushing the forefront of software reproducibility</li>
<p>This past year we've all grown more conscious of our interconnected world.
These events escalate the importance of free software tools that empower
us all. Closed source and proprietary tools have overtaken many
communication channels — particularly when we work from home. Even
conferences and lecture series dedicated to “open source
infrastructure” have been unable to escape the grasp of these closed
systems. As we monitored these diffcult events, we prioritized support for
those in our community that understand the crucial need
for <ahref="/blog/2021/feb/08/just-say-no-to-zoom/">conferences run
solely with free software</a>. We have been pleased to support free
communication tools to assist with these efforts. <b>Our commitment to
using, developing, and supporting free software tools and communities has
never been stronger.</b></p>
<p>Over the past year, we took on new work that would have
been <em>impossible</em> without your support. Last month, we filed
a <ahref="/vizio">lawsuit against long time license violator Vizio</a>.
Through that lawsuit and many non-litigation ongoing license enforcement
actions, Software Freedom Conservancy leads the field: We stand up for
license compliance and holding corporation accountable when others
won't. Our focus in software licensing defends consumer rights. This novel and
critical approach to license compliance culminates years of effort by our amazing policy and legal experts. We
believe software freedom, when properly and actively upheld, enables everyone to hold
technology providers accountable to the people most
impacted by their actions.</p>
<p>This year, we filed more DMCA exemption requests than any organization in
the country —
and <ahref="/news/2021/oct/28/2021-DMCA-final-exemptions-win/">we won on
every single one</a>. We clarified the right to jailbreak of routers (an
essential activity of our <ahref="https://openwrt.org">OpenWrt
project</a>), won a new right to safely investigate devices for license
compliance, and helped solidify privacy-related research. Karen (our
executive director) also participated with a coalition that achieved yet
another exemption for medical devices! Our lawyer, Pam Chestek, <ahref="https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2021/hearing-transcripts/210407-Section-1201-Public-Hearing-Class-15-7a-7b.pdf#page=13">testified</a> at the DMCA
hearings on these exemptions, and confronted industry lobbyists directly as
they sought to use their extreme
wealth and legal power to harm consumers. We stridently fight their overreach — one bit at a time.</p>
<h3id="Highlights">Highlights from some of our member projects</h3>
<divdata-read-more="Read more about our projects…">
<p>Software Freedom Conservancy have helped our projects engage in critical work this year. Overall, we funded $1.7 million in work to improve software freedom, this year alone! </p>
<p>We helped <b>Outreachy</b> expand to its largest cohorts ever. Our last round accepted 71 interns, and we announced this week that the current round will have 62! (that's 133 interns, an 27% growth from the previous two rounds!) We're grateful to be able support Outreachy to serve more communities who are committed to helping to push back against systemic underrepresentation in technology and software.</p>
<p><b>Godot</b> has continued to push the boundary of what we thought was possible with an open source game engine, with an impressive team contracted by Software Freedom Conservancy. The team is building their community and we are so proud to see how their <ahref="https://godotengine.org/community">focus on community</a> has been to their benefit. To see the cutting edge of what creators are making, see their <ahref="https://godotengine.org/article/announcing-2021-godot-games-showreel">newest showreel</a>.</p>
<p>Software Freedom Conservancy is also proud to support the <b>Reproducible Builds</b> team as they ensure the security of computer systems of all shapes and sizes around the world. We know that as time goes on we'll see how necessary and vital this project is. The <ahref="https://reproducible-builds.org/tools/">tools they've made</a> are freely available to help others increase reproducibility in their own projects.</p>
<p><b>OpenWrt</b> had their OpenWrt 21.02 release which increases the default security options including optional SELinux and <acronymtitle="Address Space Layout Randomization">ASLR</acronym>. This project empowers users to run a free operating system on their routers, and combined with our DMCA exemption, makes the landscape of free firmware much easier to explore and deploy. Another member project, <b>coreboot</b>, has further grown the supported hardware list for freeing your bootloader. These two projects are at the core of our <ahref="https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/firmware-liberation.html">firmware liberation initiation</a>. As more and more companies find out, consumers are drawn to hardware that can run copyleft software and contrary to popular belief, are willing to pay for it!</p>
<p><b>The Institute for Computing in Research</b> has furthered it's mission by expanding it's intern cohort to include a selection of six high school students in Portland, Oregon. This unique paid internship introduces high school students to software freedom as part of a summer research position that focuses on introducing young scholars to computing in areas of physical science, life science, social science, arts, and humanities. Supported by academics at Portland State University, Reed College, and Oregon State University, the cohort in Portland has projects in computational biology, natural language processing, pure math, and AI and game theory. </p>
</div>
<h3id="NewStaff">New staff!</h3>
<divdata-read-more="Click more for on our new staff…">
<p>At the end of last year we were able to hire <ahref="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2020/dec/02/sharp-newest-employee/">Sage Sharp</a> as Senior Director of Diversity & Inclusion and they are rounding out their first year with us. And finishing up his first six months is <ahref="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/may/18/pono-introduction/">Daniel Pono Takamori</a> our Community Organizer & Non-Profit Problem Solver. These two have been very welcome additions to our team of just five full time employees, and one part time employee. We are proud of the breadth of skills and dedication of our team.</p>
<p>As a testament to "practice what you preach", we undertook what we consider a fair and equitable hiring process which our executive director Karen wrote about <ahref="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/oct/15/equitable-hiring/">here</a>. We lead by example with transparency and making sure we cast a wide net to avoid just hiring within our circles.</p>
<p>We also spent some time updating our website to make it easier to use and better convey our mission and work. Our chat platform moved to <ahref="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jun/21/chat-options/">XMPP</a>. Bridging to IRC and Matrix is supported, so you are welcome to join with whatever client you like (unlike other loose options). As mentioned above, we are committed to using free software for communication and demonstrating that organizations of all sizes can make the same commitment.</p>
</div>
<h3id="WritingAndSpeaking">Writing and Speaking</h3>
<divdata-read-more="Find out about our writing and speaking engagements…">
<p>Software Freedom Conservancy team members published some very important writings this year to both give further historical context and modern interpretation. Denver Gingerich wrote about the <ahref="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/">installation requirement for the GPLv2</a>. Bradley Kuhn documented the historical record in his related piece about <ahref="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-the-gpl-right-to-install/">“Tivoization” and Your Right to Install Under Copyleft</a>. And he writes about <ahref=" https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jun/30/who-should-own-foss-copyrights/">It Matters Who Owns Your Copylefted Copyrights</a>, which garnered a lot of great community conversations. In another vein, Sage Sharp of Outreachy wrote a tremendous piece titled <ahref="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/apr/20/how-to-apologize/">So you want to apologize… Now what?</a>, which has helped explain the entire life cycle apologizing for your own behavior. We can all learn from this piece about how to act more humanely in our shared spaces of production.</p>
<p>This was another long year of online conferences. While the traveling was easier (by not doing it), we miss the face to face relationship building that we've come to expect from our big conference gatherings. We can't wait to get back to a sense of normalcy and at least have a little less latency between us.</p>
<p>Karen, our executive director, gave two keynotes this year, one at the <ahref="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2021/mar/23/karen-lailec-2021/">Leuven AI Law & Ethics Conference</a> and another at <ahref="https://conf.linuxappsummit.org/event/3/contributions/71/">Linux App Summit</a>. Karen also spoke with Marina Zhurakhinskaya at All Things Open about the 10+ year history of Outreachy. She was also an invited speaker at <ahref="https://heales.org/2021/05/28/conference-big-data-a-i-and-healthy-longevity-how-to-progress-faster-and-better-for-all-scientists-thursday-september-9-2021/">Big Data, A.I. and Healthy Longevity. How to progress faster and better for all scientists</a>.</p>
<p>Karen and Bradley were also co-organizers (with others) of the Legal & Policy Devroom at FOSDEM, where they also moderated panels and spoke. Sage Sharp spoke at the <ahref="https://chanzuckerberg.com/eoss/">Chan Zuckerberg Essential Open Source</a> event. Daniel Pono Takamori gave a talk about <ahref="http://pdxlinux.org/2021-07-01-FreeSoftware-LegacyOfCommunication.pdf">"How Free Software Continues the Legacy of Open Communication"</a> to the Portland Linux/ Unix Group.</p>
<p>We were also a sponsor of the fantastic <ahref="https://seagl.org/">SeaGL</a> event. A community focused conference that does an incredible job giving opportunities to first-time speakers (suitable for community members of all walks of life). They hosted their conference on the Matrix platform, which further proved it's possible to run a virtual conference with free software.</p>
</div>
<h3id="HelpUs">Help us Continue this Work</h3>
<p>We are beyond thankful for ability to continue our work due to your financial contributions. We recognize that not everyone has the same financial leeway to donate as they have in the past. But please consider giving what you can so that our organization can continue to advocate and support the rights of all software users. We will continue to work as hard as we can with our small staff. And we hope that through our hard work, creativity and passionate dedication, we've demonstrated over the years how Software Freedom Conservancy continues to be the beacon of change for software freedom that the world needs. <ahref="https://sfconservancy.org/donate/">Please consider donating here.</a></p>
<imgsrc="/img/scaled-LLW-2015-Conservancy-Supporters-by-Carlo-Piana-CC-0.jpg"alt="Zack, Karen, John and Jim pose, mostly wearing the vintage t-shirt!"/>
<p>Vintage-shirt-wearing Sustainers pose with Karen! <br/>From left: Stefano “Zack” Zacchiroli, Karen M. Sandler, John Sullivan, and Jim Wright</p>
<p>We know you are sick of hearing about supply chains, global shortages, and deliveries being delayed. But we must be up front that since we have a small staff we try to batch our t-shirt orders, and given the realities of the pandemic we are somewhat behind on our t-shirt deliveries. We're working on a new t-shirt design for this year and will send everybody their shirts after the end of this fundraiser. We so appreciate everyone's patience! </p>
by <ahref="https://twitter.com/bensturmfels/status/599118574641262592">our earliest Sustainers</a> at <ahref="https://twitter.com/conservancy/status/786480068512002048">conferences and events</a>? If so, read on!</p>
<imgsrc="/img/2019-08-26_Neil-alone_GUADECSupporterNight.jpg"alt="Neil McGovern, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, wears the vintage t-shirt!"/>
<p>Neil McGovern wearing that stylish vintage shirt!</p>
