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Copyleft Compliance: rewrite about page in light of strategic plan

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The copyleft-compliance/about.html page doubles as the introduction
page to our compliance work.  This is a start at the rewrite of that
page to link off to the new items and have new text to inspire
interest in the project.
This commit is contained in:
Bradley M. Kuhn 2020-07-17 14:11:33 -07:00
parent c27d339721
commit d623a9b5c4
1 changed files with 55 additions and 38 deletions
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93
www/conservancy/static/copyleft-compliance/about.html
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@ -4,41 +4,56 @@
{% block content %}
<h1 id="ourwork">Conservancy's Copyleft Compliance Projects</h1>
<p>Free and open source software 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>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>Conservancy engages in copyleft compliance work in two different ways: by acting directly
on behalf of <a href="/projects/">Conservancy's Member Projects</a> who request
Free and Open Source License compliance efforts, and for
specific, targeted member projects for communities of developers.</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 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.</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>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 <a href="https://lists.sfconservancy.org/mailman/listinfo/principles-discuss">principles-discuss</a>
mailing list, which is named
for <a href="/copyleft-compliance/principles.html">Principles of
Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement</a> which Conservancy follows in all our
copyleft compliance.</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>
<h2 id="projects">Compliance Project For Our Fiscally Sponsored Projects</h2>
<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, 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 <a href="mailto:PROJECTNAME@sfconservancy.org">&lt;PROJECTNAME@sfconservancy.org&gt;</a>
for more information on getting involved in compliance efforts in that project.
for more information on getting involved in compliance efforts in that
project.
</p>
<h2 id="linux">GPL Compliance Project For Linux Developers</h2>
@ -71,7 +86,6 @@ Conservancy should
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
@ -106,24 +120,27 @@ Conservancy should contact <a href="mailto:debian-services@sfconservancy.org">&l
<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>
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, Evergreen, Inkscape, Mercurial,
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>
&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 Distinguished Technologist, 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
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>