website/www/conservancy/static/copyleft-compliance/about.html

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<h1 id="ourwork">Conservancy's Copyleft Compliance Projects</h1>

<p>As existing donors and supporters know, the Software Freedom Conservancy
  is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity registered in New York, and Conservancy
  helps people take control of their computing by growing the software
  freedom movement, supporting community-driven alternatives to proprietary
  software, and defending free software with practical initiatives.
  Conservancy accomplishes these goals with various initiatives, including
  defending and upholding the rights of software users and consumers under
  copyleft licenses, such as the GPL.</p>

<p>Free and open source software (FOSS) is everywhere and in everything; yet
our software freedom is constantly eroded.  With the help of its
volunteers, <a href="/members/current/">member projects</a>,
and <a href="/about/staff/">staff</a>, Conservancy stands up for users'
software freedom via its copyleft compliance work.</p>

<p>Conservancy's primary work in copyleft compliance currently focuses on
our <a href="/copyleft-compliance/enforcement-strategy.html">Strategic GPL
Enforcement Initiative</a>.  This initiative, launched in August 2020,
represents the culmination of nearly 15 years of compliance work of
Conservancy spanning ten different fiscally sponsored projects, past lawsuits
against more than a dozen defendants, and hundreds of non-litigation
compliance actions.</p>

<p>For these many years, Conservancy has always given the benefit of the
  doubt to companies who exploited our good nature and ultimately simply
  ignore the rights of users and consumers.  In that time, the compliance
  industrial complex has risen to a multi-million-dollar industry &mdash;
  selling (mostly proprietary) products, services, and consulting to
  companies.  Yet, these compliance efforts ignore consistently the most
  essential promise of copyleft &mdash; the complete, Corresponding Source
  and "the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the
  executable".</p>

<p>We encourage our supporters and software freedom enthusiasts everywhere to
  <a href="/copyleft-compliance/enforcement-strategy.html">read our detailed
  strategic plan for GPL enforcement</a> and its companion
  project, <a href="/copyleft-compliance/firmware-liberation.html">Our
    Firmware Liberation Project</a>.</p>

<h2 id="projects">Compliance Relationship to Fiscally Sponsored Projects</h2>

<p>Historically, Conservancy was well-known for its ongoing license
compliance efforts on behalf of its BusyBox member project.  Today,
Conservancy does semi-regular compliance work for its BusyBox, Git, Inkscape,
Mercurial, Samba, QEMU and Wine member projects.  If you are a copyright
holder in any member project of Conservancy, please contact the project's
leadership committtee,
via <a href="mailto:PROJECTNAME@sfconservancy.org">&lt;PROJECTNAME@sfconservancy.org&gt;</a>
for more information on getting involved in compliance efforts in that
project.
</p>

<h2 id="linux">GPL Compliance Project For Linux Developers</h2>

<p>In May
2012, <a href="/news/2012/may/29/compliance/">Conservancy
launched</a> the <cite>GPL
Compliance Project for Linux Developers</cite>, which handles compliance and
enforcement activities on behalf of more than a dozen Linux copyright
holders.</p>
 
<p>The GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers is comprised of copyright
holders in the kernel, Linux, who have contributed to Linux under its
license, <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html">the
GPLv2</a>. These copyright holders have formally asked Conservancy to engage
in compliance efforts for their copyrights in the Linux kernel.  In addition,
some developers have directly assigned their copyrights on Linux to Conservancy,
so Conservancy also enforces the GPL on Linux via its own copyrights in Linux.</p>

<p>Linux copyright holders who wish to assign copyright to or sign an enforcement agreement with
Conservancy should
  contact <a href="mailto:linux-services@sfconservancy.org">&lt;linux-services@sfconservancy.org&gt;</a>.
  In 2016,
  Conservancy <a href="/news/2016/nov/03/linux-compliance-agreements/">made
    public the template agreements used as part of this project</a>; both the
  <a href="/docs/blank_linux-enforcement-agreement.pdf">non-anonymous</a> and
  <a href="/docs/blank_anonymous-linux-enforcement-agreement.pdf">anonymous</a>
  versions are available.  However, please <strong>do not</strong> sign these
  unilaterally without contacting and discussing
  with <a href="mailto:linux-services@sfconservancy.org">&lt;linux-services@sfconservancy.org&gt;</a>
  first.</p>

<h2 id="debian">The Debian Copyright Aggregation Project</h2>

<p>In August 2015, <a href="/news/2015/aug/17/debian/">Conservancy announced the Debian Copyright Aggregation
Project</a>.  This project allows Debian contributors to assign copyrights to
Conservancy, or sign enforcement agreements allowing Conservancy to enforce
Free and Open Source (FOSS) licenses on their behalf.  Many Debian contributors
have chosen each of these options already, and more continue to join.</p>

<p>Debian contributors who wish to assign copyright to or sign an enforcement agreement with
Conservancy should contact <a href="mailto:debian-services@sfconservancy.org">&lt;debian-services@sfconservancy.org&gt;</a>.</p>

<h2 id="commitment">Conservancy's Commitment to Copyleft License Compliance</h2>

<p>Conservancy is dedicated to encouraging all users of software to comply
  with Free Software licenses. Toward this goal, in its compliance efforts,
  Conservancy helps distributors of Free Software in a friendly spirit of
  cooperation and participation.  In this spirit, Conservancy has co-published,
  with the Free Software Foundation (FSF), <a href="/copyleft-compliance/principles.html">the principles that both organizations
  follow in their compliance efforts</a>.
  Also in collaboration with the FSF, Conservancy also sponsors
  the <a href="https://copyleft.org/guide/"><cite>Copyleft and the GNU
  General Public License:A Comprehensive Tutorial and Guide</cite></a>,
  which <a href="/news/2014/nov/07/copyleft-org/">formally
  launched in fall 2014</a>.  The Guide includes tutorial materials about
  copyleft and compliance with copyleft licenses,
  including <a href="https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidepa2.html"><cite>A
  Practical Guide to GPL Compliance</cite></a>.  The materials
  on <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft.org</a> have been developed and
  improved since 2002, and are themselves copylefted, and developed
  collaboratively in public.</p>

<p>However, the Guide is admittedly a large document, so for those who are
  interested in a short summary of describing how Conservancy handles GPL
  enforcement and compliance
  work, <a href="/blog/2012/feb/01/gpl-enforcement/">this blog post outlining
  the compliance process</a> is likely the best source.</p>

<h2 id="reporting">Reporting GPL Violations To Us</h2>

<p>If you are aware of a license violation or compliance issue regarding
  Debian, Linux, or any <a href="/members/current/">Conservancy member
  project</a> (&mdash; in particular BusyBox, Git, Inkscape, Mercurial,
  Samba, Sugar Labs, or Wine),
  please <a href="mailto:compliance@sfconservancy.org">contact us by email at
  &lt;compliance@sfconservancy.org&gt;</a>.</p>

<!--- FIXME: bkuhn is rewriting this blog post fresh the weekend of --
      2020-07-18 so we need not link to ebb.org anymore when we roll out
      these changes --> 

<p>If you think you've found a GPL violation, we encourage you to
   read <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/11/08/gpl-enforcement.html">this
   personal blog post by our Policy Fellow, Bradley M. Kuhn</a>, about good
   practices in discovering and reporting GPL violations.  (We'd also like
   someone to convert the text of that blog post into a patch for
   <a href="http://compliance.guide">The Compliance Guide on
   copyleft.org</a>; submit it
   via <a href="https://k.copyleft.org/guide/">k.copyleft.org</a>.)</p>
   
<h2 id="support">Donate to Support This Work</h2>

<p>Finally, Conservancy welcomes <a href="#donate-box"
  class="donate-now">donations</a> in support of our GPL Compliance Projects,
  and we encourage you to become a <a href="/supporter/">an official
  Supporter of Software Freedom Conservancy</a>. </p>
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