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Become a Conservancy Supporter!

Become a Supporter Now: Annual | Monthly | Annual Renew

Join as an Annual Supporter

Note: annual supporter is not an automatic renewal relationship. If you join today, you'll receive an email in about one year to remind you to optionally renew.

$120 is a minimum for Conservancy Supporters. Donate smaller amounts here.
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Join as an Monthly Supporter

Monthly renewal is automatic. Also, monthly supporters might not receive tangible Supporter benefits (such as the t-shirt) until they've reached at least $60 in monthly supporter donations. However, they will be included immediately in the Supporters' list.

$10/month is a minimum for Conservancy Supporters. Donate smaller amounts here.
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Renew as an Annual Supporter

Note: This option is for existing annual supporters who seek to renew for another year. The annual renewal is not automatic; annual supporters are emailed each year to invite them to optionally renew.

$120 is a minimum for Conservancy Supporters. Donate smaller amounts here.
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Software Freedom needs your help.

Conservancy must move to a Supporter-driven organization so we can focus on critical free software issues that nobody else is tackling. Stand up for the GPL, support great member projects, and make your voice heard in support of free software.

The world today is powered more and more 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 dedicate themselves to. Projects like Git, Samba, Wine, BusyBox, QEMU, Inkscape, Selenium, and dozens more.

We are asking for you to but this is more than our usual annual fundraising appeal. As described in more detail below, after the events of 2015, we must substantially increase our individual support to be able to continue defending software freedom for our member projects and the entire free and open source software community. We needed at least 750 of you to become annual Supporters just to continue our basic community services, and we thank you so much that you responded. But we still need 2,500 (total) of you to become annual Supporters now to continue our licensing work, including enforcing copyleft licenses. If you don't become a Supporter now, we will be forced to radically restructure and wind down a substantial portion of our operations.

2016 successes

Software Freedom Conservancy has had a lot of major successes this year:

And we did all of this with a tiny staff of only four full time employees.

We are focused on the most important ethical issues in software freedom. We work tirelessly and don't shy away from difficult issues.

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 40 member projects that are essential to developing free software.

We undertake these critical programs because they are essential to the future of technology. We do them because they are right. But we cannot do them without you. Last year you helped us to fundraising goals that didn't merely keep us running, but even let us hire a new employee. Yet even this staffing level isn't enough to handle our existing workload.

Our fiscal sponsorship model is not financially self-sustaining by itself: we cannot afford even one staff member and basic overhead with the revenue we take in from our projects. With over 1,000 Supporters, we can now sustain the basic work and we will survive. But to thrive, and handle the really complex tasks like copyright and licensing advice, and license compliance, we need even more resources. That's why our final target is 2,500 Supporters. If you use or care about our member projects, which include some of the most widely used free software, you can help them all by .

Fighting for the GPL

Many consider our GPL compliance and enforcement controversial. We don't think it is: we stand up for the GPL at the request of our member projects, the Debian community, and members of the Linux kernel community. Most recently, that has resulted in our funding of the suit against VMware, which is the first lawsuit on derivative works and the GPL (Christoph's case continues on appeal). While this work is extremely important to the continued long-term success of software freedom and copyleft, not to mention in the long-term interest of the industry as a whole, it makes fundraising from companies very difficult. Some companies have stopped funding us and some have even successfully pressured conferences to cancel or prevent talks on our compliance work. 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 .

Photo of Conservancy t-shirt that Supporters receive

It's up to you

Conservancy is deeply committed to supporting, promoting, developing, and defending free and open source software. We pursue our mission on various fronts, and we're proud of what we've been able to accomplish in 2016. To do even more in 2017 and in the years to come, we need your help.

We believe 2017 will be a critical year for Conservancy, our member projects, and our work. We look forward to making huge strides in providing software tools for public charities as well as services for developer communities. We will continue to champion the rights of the public and the interests of copyright holders who have licensed their contributions to the commons for the public's benefit. We will continue to host and speak at conferences, create and maintain educational resources, and raise awareness about how free and open source software is essential to a free and open source society.

While we appreciate our corporate donors, we simply cannot depend solely on grants from companies who may not find our mission to be compatible with shifting corporate strategies. We need you, the public as well. Simply put, we need 2,500 Supporters in order to maintain our staff, continue to provide a full range of administrative, bookkeeping, and legal services to our member projects, educate the public, and undertake compliance efforts. We hope you will to help us achieve this. If we don't reach our goal, we will have no choice but to hibernate some of our activities — likely our compliance efforts — until we have the resources to resume them properly at some point in the future.

Supporters ♥ Conservancy

If you care about Conservancy's mission, so we can stand up for software freedom together.

Please and spread the word!

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