From d623a9b5c4a6fe7e8f669b42bc52aa141aa8f7ce Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "Bradley M. Kuhn" Free and open source software is
- everywhere and in everything; yet our software freedom is constantly
- eroded. With the help of its volunteers, member projects, and staff,
- Conservancy stands up for users' software freedom via its copyleft compliance work. 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. Conservancy engages in copyleft compliance work in two different ways: by acting directly
-on behalf of Conservancy's Member Projects who request
-Free and Open Source License compliance efforts, and for
-specific, targeted member projects for communities of developers. Free and open source software (FOSS) is everywhere and in everything; yet
+our software freedom is constantly eroded. With the help of its
+volunteers, member projects,
+and staff, Conservancy stands up for users'
+software freedom via its copyleft compliance work. Conservancy's Copyleft Compliance Projects are run in a collaborative manner with
-the project developers. All copyright holders involved have the opportunity
-to give input and guidance on Conservancy's strategy in dealing with
-compliance issues. Thus, all Conservancy's compliance matter have full
- support of relevant copyright holders. Conservancy's primary work in copyleft compliance currently focuses on
+our Strategic GPL
+Enforcement Initiative. 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. In addition to taking feedback internally from those who participate as
- part of the coalitions described below, Conservancy also welcomes feedback
- and discussion with the general public about our copyleft compliance
- efforts. This discussion happens on
- Conservancy's principles-discuss
- mailing list, which is named
- for Principles of
- Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement which Conservancy follows in all our
- copyleft compliance. 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 —
+ selling (mostly proprietary) products, services, and consulting to
+ companies. Yet, these compliance efforts ignore consistently the most
+ essential promise of copyleft — the complete, Corresponding Source
+ and "the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the
+ executable". We encourage our supporters and software freedom enthusiasts everywhere to
+ read our detailed
+ strategic plan for GPL enforcement and its companion
+ project, Our
+ Firmware Liberation Project. 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, Evergreen, Git, Inkscape, Mercurial,
-Samba, Sugar Labs, QEMU and Wine member projects. If you are a copyright holder
-in any member project of Conservancy, please contact the project's leadership committtee,
+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 <PROJECTNAME@sfconservancy.org>
-for more information on getting involved in compliance efforts in that project.
+for more information on getting involved in compliance efforts in that
+project.
Conservancy's Copyleft Compliance Projects
-Compliance Project For Our Fiscally Sponsored Projects
+Compliance Relationship to Fiscally Sponsored Projects
GPL Compliance Project For Linux Developers
@@ -71,7 +86,6 @@ Conservancy should
with <linux-services@sfconservancy.org>
first.
In August 2015, Conservancy announced the Debian Copyright Aggregation
@@ -106,24 +120,27 @@ Conservancy should contact &l
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, this
- blog post outlining the compliance process is likely the best source.
If you are aware of a license violation or compliance issue regarding - Debian, Linux, or - any Conservancy member - project (— in particular BusyBox, Evergreen, Inkscape, Mercurial, + Debian, Linux, or any Conservancy member + project (— in particular BusyBox, Git, Inkscape, Mercurial, Samba, Sugar Labs, or Wine), please contact us by email at - <compliance@sfconservancy.org>.
+ <compliance@sfconservancy.org>. + +If you think you've found a GPL violation, we encourage you to read this - personal blog post by our Distinguished Technologist, Bradley M. Kuhn, - 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 + personal blog post by our Policy Fellow, Bradley M. Kuhn, 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 The Compliance Guide on copyleft.org; submit it via k.copyleft.org.)