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<imgsrc="/img/2020_Sebro-Tony_CopyleftConf.jpg"alt="Tony Sebro speaks on stage in front of a slide comparing 1800’s Eschatology and Golden Era Hip Hop">
<p>Our Outreachy internship program became even more essential during this
difficult time. Everyone needs remote work now, <em>and</em> to learn how
to effectively work remotely. This year, we achieved the most internships in
a single year yet!
We funded over 100 interns across two cohorts, generating
new code, new documentation, and essential FOSS contributions. Outreachy
also prepares its interns for remote-work careers in FOSS, providing access to opportunities after their internship is over.
Since traveling is unsafe during a pandemic, interns could not use the Outreachy travel stipend for in-person conferences or events.
We moved quickly to pay all 127 active travel stipends simply as additional intern bonuses, helping both current interns and many alums during this stressful time.</p>
<p>We hear the news consistently that this pandemic has hit underrepresented groups harder for the same
reasons of systemic bias that we’ve talked about for years in Outreachy. We’ve worked to make the program more stable and to diversify its funding so that we can support even more internships going forward.
We’re proud to help in our own small way.</p>
<p>It’s not just interns we fund. Overall, Conservancy funded 27 contractors for a
total of about $650,000 and 16 grantees about $100,000 in the last 12 months.
That’s three-quarters of a million dollars of funded FOSS work for the public good in just one year! And along with our internships, we spent a total of $1.5 million! The contractors spanned 15 projects and accomplished some impressive work. Our contractors report publicly on their work and you can see the <ahref="https://reproducible-builds.org/reports/2020-10/">Reproducible Builds team</a> helping us know we can rely on the software we use, the <ahref="https://sage.thesharps.us/2020/11/05/2020-10-outreachy-progress/">Outreachy team</a> organizing the complex and resource intensive internship program, <ahref="https://github.com/mauriciofauth">phpMyAdmin</a> continuing their longstanding work to maintain and improve one of the most popular MySQL administration tools and the <ahref="https://godotengine.org/article/improvements-gpuparticles-godot-40">Godot team</a> as they work to make the best game engine ever.</p>
<p>Our contractors write, document, and share great
FOSS that benefits the general public; there is no other organization in
the world that pays contractors that much money with that as their primary
directive. Sure, companies write lots of FOSS, but they focus only on projects that
benefit their profit motive and self-interest. We fund FOSS development that benefits everyone and we
only fund software development that completely respects your software freedom and
<p>This year, we expanded our plans and involvement on key issues of software
freedom policy. We are known throughout the FOSS community as the
organization that knows the details of FOSS policy — from project governance, to licensing to Codes of
Conduct — and gets those details
right. We help our projects with everything from minor disagreements among
leadership to major licensing challenges that threaten the future of their
project. While we can’t tell every one of these stories on our blog,
just ask anyone in our Project Leadership Committees and they’ll surely
tell you that Conservancy knows our stuff and handles any issues of this nature that occur.</p>
<p>Whenever possible, though, Conservancy does our policy work in public as key activists for software freedom. We <ahref="/news/2020/jan/15/googlevoracle/">added our voice</a> to important legal cases like Google v. Oracle. We provided context to interpret issues arising over the year, such as the launch of <ahref="/blog/2020/jul/09/org-proliferation/">new organizational solutions for FOSS</a> and <ahref="/blog/2020/oct/26/microsoft-github-riaa-youtube-dl/">DMCA aggression towards FOSS projects</a>. We presented new ways to think about our critical problems, like legal mechanisms to achieve <ahref="/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality/">copyleft equality</a> in the face of proprietary relicensing, ways to <ahref="/blog/2019/dec/19/CPupdate/">support maintainers in employment contracts</a>, and extend protection of FOSS projects from <ahref="/blog/2020/nov/13/widevine-dmca-takedown/">aggressive DMCA takedowns</a>. We successfully filed for a <ahref="/news/2020/jul/30/refile2020/">renewal of the Smart TV DMCA exemption</a> that we achieved in 2015. We
went even further this year, and applied for <ahref="/blog/2020/sep/16/dmca-exemptions-2020/">three more exemptions</a> that would protect the rights of those who use interconnected devices that have become critical fixtures in everyone’s lives.</p>
<p>Most importantly, Conservancy remains the only charity actively fighting for the rights ensured by GPL on Linux. Our focus remains on IoT and embedded devices
that are now ubiquitous and used by everyone. While we can only <ahref="/blog/2019/oct/02/cambium-ubiquiti-gpl-violations/">occasionally discuss GPL enforcement matters publicly</a>, we launched this
year our <ahref="/copyleft-compliance/enforcement-strategy.html">Strategic GPL Enforcement Plan</a>, and our companion <ahref="/copyleft-compliance/firmware-liberation.html">Firmware Liberation Project</a>. These two new initiatives have
just begun and they need your support and help to succeed.</p>
<p>In 2020, Conservancy welcomed two important new projects. The <ahref="/news/2020/jul/21/ICRjoins/">Institute for Computing in Research</a> runs a mentoring program designed to bridge inequities in tech by training teenage students to do rigorous scientific research using free software. <ahref="/news/2020/sep/10/openwrt-joins/">OpenWrt</a> is a critical FOSS wireless router project that demonstrates the long lasting positive results of strategic GPL enforcement. We also recognize that communities change over time. In addition to adding new projects, we took the time this past year to sunset some of our projects that no longer had a charitable focus.</p>
<p>We were also pleased to welcome <ahref="/news/2020/jan/03/arandal/">Allison Randal</a>, a steadfast advocate of software freedom, to our Board of Directors.</p>
<p>FOSS events and conferences have always been an essential component of FOSS,
but this year, the pandemic thwarted our usual event system an infrastructure.
Conservancy has been at the center of transitioning events to online formats for
both our member
projects and other third party other FOSS conferences and event groups. People around the world took huge losses in travel and event
cancellations, but we were adept. We acted early and saved tens of thousands for
our member projects by negotiating with canceled venues. We quickly adjusted
our travel policy to handle pandemic refund procedures, and we posted those changes publicly for other organizations to benefit. When it’s safe and healthy for everyone to travel again, we plan to organize Copyleft Conf, SeConf, and the dozens of in-person hackfests. Meanwhile, we have and will continue to
help our projects cancel or reschedule their events and, as we did for our member projects like Racket and Selenium, to operate as virtual events this year.</p>
<p>We were lucky that Copyleft Conf 2020 was timed before the
pandemic was upon us, and that event was an amazing success. We reached out and welcomed non-FOSS licensors who seek to use
<ahref="https://archive.org/details/copyleftconf2020-ehmke">copyleft for social justice</a> to begin dialogue. To this day, it remains the
only <ahref="https://archive.org/details/copyleftconf2020-ethical-licensing">discussion</a> of its kind, and the <ahref="https://archive.org/details/@sfconservancy?and[]=subject%3A%22copyleftconf2020%22">videos</a> are
still available for your virtual viewing. We plan to turn
Copyleft Conf 2021 into a year-long series of online sessions about issues in copyleft
as we look hopefully forward to an in-person Copyleft Conf 2022.</p>
<p>We participated in many exciting events organized by others. Before travel was canceled, we presented multiple talks at LCA and on the FOSDEM main stage, helped organize the Legal & Policy DevRoom at FOSDEM, spoke to students and faculty at Oxford University, ran a workshop at Open Source 101 and delivered keynotes at CHAOSScon, Git Merge and the OpenUK Healthcare event. Once in-person events were no longer possible, we participated in many virtual events, including GUADEC, DebConf, ÖzgürKon and State of the Source. Our Executive Director was a featured speaker at VentCon, a conference urgently organized in May for folks working on FOSS projects for ventilators at a time when making sure that hospitals had enough access to ventilators to treat the surge in COVID-19 patients was a top concern.</p>
<p>We also remain ready to continue our work of helping to sponsor travel for our member projects and their events when travel becomes safe again. Before we ceased our conferences and travel, we funded over $60,000 worth of travel to important events, on pace for what could have been one of our biggest travel sponsorship years. We invested remaining travel funds into improving online infrastructure and planning
for how to keep FOSS engaged without these essential in-person events.</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 Supporters pose with Karen! <br/>From left: Stefano “Zack” Zacchiroli, Karen M. Sandler, John Sullivan, and Jim Wright</p>
would you like to take advantage of a last chance to get our vintage design — seen sported so often
by <ahref="https://twitter.com/bensturmfels/status/599118574641262592">our earliest Supporters</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>
