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www/conservancy/static/supporter/2015-supporter-appeal.html
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<div class="content-with-donate-sidebar">
<h1><img class="appeal-header" alt="Become a Conservancy Supporter!" src="/img/conservancy-supporter-header.png"/></h1>
<p>Software Freedom Conservancy is an essential organization to free and
open source software. We are the home of over
<a href="/members/current/">30 projects</a> like
<a href="http://git-scm.org">Git</a>,
<a href="http://inkscape.org">Inkscape</a>, <a href="http://samba.org">Samba</a>,
<a href="http://winehq.org">Wine</a>, <a href="http://www.seleniumhq.org/">Selenium</a>, the <a href="/linux-compliance/">GPL Compliance Project for Linux
Developers</a>, <a href="http://pypy.org">PyPy</a> and
<a href="http://sugarlabs.org/">Sugar Labs</a> just to name a few. Conservancy is a "fiscal sponsor plus",
providing everything that our projects need in a nonprofit. We help our
projects defend their trademarks, manage their assets, handle donations,
improve their community management, manage risk and assist them with all
legal needs they may have. While we do receive a portion of the revenue
donated to our projects, we keep that number low enough that it doesn't
even pay for a single staff member. <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">Help us</a> show that you care about
community-focused free software and help us be able to continue our
charitable work. Donating to Conservancy is a great non-technical way to
contribute to the cause.</p>
<p>Software Freedom needs your help.</p>
<img alt="*** The Conservancy T-Shirt that Supporters Receive ***" class="appeal" src="/img/conservancy-t-shirt.jpg"/>
The world today is powered increasingly by Free Software. But what many people don't realize is how much support is needed to keep all of these projects free and open. The work that we do every day ensures the success and the continued freedom of the projects that the developers of our member projects so tireless dedicate themselves to. Projects like Git, Samba, Wine, BusyBox, QEMU, Inkscape, Selenium, and dozens more [FIXME Link to nascar pic]
<p>For the first time, we're launching a Supporter
program. For <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">an annual donation of $120</a>, you can
download an official Supporter card and receive a Conservancy t-shirt<a id="return-footnote-shirts-when"></a>. If
this is out of reach, please donate at whatever level you can - it makes a
big difference to us to know that you <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">support us</a>, and a little goes a long
way.</p>
<p>In addition to supporting our projects,
<h4>2015 successes</h4>
<ul>
<li>we share our expertise across communities. We speak at many
conferences, and publish materials to increase understanding about the
organizational, community and legal issues around free and open source
software. We advocate for free and open source software and provide
education around that mission. We form partnerships across our
communities to work more effectively. Check out <a
href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft.org</a>
or sign up to join the <a
href="http://sfconservancy.org/news/2014/aug/12/tax-exempt-working-group/">
tax exempt working group</a>.</li>
<li>We brought three new projects under the protection of the Conservancy: <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/jul/23/qemu-joins/">QEMU</a> - the generic machine emulator and virtualizer, <a href="https://www.bro.org/">The Bro Network Security Monitor</a>, and <a href="http://outreachy.org">Outreachy</a>, a program dedicated to helping people from underrepresented groups get involved in free and open source software. We also worked with the Debian community to launch the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/aug/17/debian/">Debian Copyright Aggregation Project</a> at their request.</li>
<li>we seek to solve problems for the public through free and open
source
software. We've launched a <a href="http://npoacct.sfconservancy.org/">
nonprofits accounting project</a> to help all
nonprofits (in free software and in other fields) avoid paying millions
of dollars in licensing fees for subpar accounting software.</li>
<li>We <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">supported the law suit</a> Christoph Hellwig has brought against VMware in Germany, the first case on derivative works and the GPL.</li>
<li>as part of Conservancy's partnership in the program, we support Karen as
a co-organizer of the Free and Open Source Software Outreach Program.</li>
<li>We fought for and <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/oct/27/DMCA-win/">successfully earned an exemption from the Library of Congress in the DMCA review process</a> to legally permit circumvention of encryption on Smart TVs, ensuring that you are free to hack on the devices that you legally own. </li>
<li>we encourage and support our employees to do volunteer work in the
community. For example, Bradley and Karen together host an oggcast
called <cite><a href="http://faif.us">Free as in Freedom</a></cite> which
discusses important legal and policy issues in open source and free
software.</li></ul>
<li>We collaborated with the <a href="https://fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a> to publish the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement</a> , establishing community norms for enforcing the GPL in the public's interest[, and already <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.kr.html">translated into Korean</a> [and Chinese].</li>
<li>Along with FSF, we helped <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/jul/15/ubuntu-ip-policy/">Canonical, Ltd. achieve compliance in its “Intellectual Property” Policy</a>, while pointing out that the policy fails to address important software freedom issues.</li>
<li>We conducted friendly discussions with companies out of compliance with the GPL, seeking non-litigous resolutions.</li>
<li>We participated in the process of <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/oct/14/FCC-comment/">telling the FCC to fix its proposed rules</a> restricting third-party modification of firmware in wireless devices.
<li>We gave keynotes at <a href="<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/aug/17/debian/">DebConf</a>, <a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/identity_crisis/">FOSDEM</a>, <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/jul/14/FISL16/">FISL</>, <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/31/libreplanet/">LibrePlanet</a>, <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/sep/30/linaro-keynote/">Linaro Connect</> and participated in many conferences more all over the world, and shared our expertise in initiatives like <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft.org</a>. We participated in interviews and <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/">blogposts</a>, and Bradley and Karen published episodes of <a href="http://faif.us/">Free as in Freedom</a>, dedicated to discussing the important issues in software freedom.</li>
</ul>
<p>And we did all of this with only three full time employees.</p>
<p>We are focused on the most important ethical issues in software freedom. We work tirelessly and don't shy away from difficult issues.</p>
<p>We're a unique organization - a staunch defender of copyleft (for Linux, Debian and many of our member projects), a source of education and champions of diversity for the community via Outreachy and other programs, and are the legal home to our over 30 member projects forwarding essential free software.</p>
<p>We undertake these critical programs because they are essential to the future of technology. We do them because they are right. <b>But we cannot do them without you</b>. If we do not meet our fundraising goals, we will be forced to radically restructure.</p>
<p>Our fiscal sponsorship model is not financially self sustaining. We cannot afford even one staff member and basic overhead with the revenue we take in from our projects. In order to effectively continue to serve our member projects, we need [750] Supporters. If you use or care about our <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member projects</a>, which include some of the most widely used free software, you can help them all by <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">signing up as a Supporter today</a>.</p>
<h4>Fighting for the GPL<h4>
<p>Our most controversial program is our GPL compliance work. We stand up for the GPL at the request of the Linux kernel community, the Debian community and our member projects. Most recently that has resulted in us funding the <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">suit against VMware</a>, which is the first law suit on derivative works and the GPL. While this work is extremely important to the continued long-term success of software freedom and copyleft, it makes fundraising from companies harder. While enforcement of the protections around free and open source software is in the long term interest of the industry, many companies are reluctant to fund organizations that take on this enforcement task. We do this work because we think that it is good for everyone in the long run, because we know it is the right thing to do and because we know that we are in the best position to do it. But that's not enough - you have to think it's right too and <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">show us by becoming a Supporter now</a>.</p>
<h4>It's up to you</h4>
<p>We have raised enough money to continue the VMware case but our overall enforcement work needs additional support to be abe to continue. As we state in the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement</a>, we cannot prioritize profit in these actions without compromising on the end goals of that work which is to help companies become free and open source software users and contributors.
<p>As a result, we need [2500] Supporters in order to maintain the staff and resources in the organization to properly undertake enforcement. We hope you will <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">sign up a Supporter</a> to help us achieve this. If we don't reach our goal, we will have no choice but to hibernate enforcement until we have the resources to pick it up properly at some point in the future.</p>
<p>If you care about the GPL, <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">help us meet our goal</a> so we can stand up for the GPL together.</p>
<img class="appeal-footer" alt="*" src="/img/conservancy-supporter-heart.png"/>
<p>As an organization, we try to do everything transparently; even
our
<a
href="https://gitorious.org/conservancy/policies/source/master:">
internal policies</a> are published and available for scrutiny.</p>
<p>Please <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">join our Supporter program</a> and spread software freedom!</p>