website/www/conservancy/templates/supporter/index.html

{% extends "base_conservancy.html" %}
{% block subtitle %}Support Conservancy - {% endblock %}
{% block category %}supporter{% endblock %}

{% block head %}
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/supporter-page.js"></script>
<link href="/css/forms.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
{% include "opengraph_partial.html" with url="/supporter/" title="Support Conservancy!" description="Software freedom is critical to many of today&rsquo;s most pressing social issues, but it&rsquo;s only effective when FOSS is for everyone. Support Conservancy today to help make that happen!" %}
{% include "opengraph_urllist_partial.html" with property='image' urls='' fallback='/img/conservancy-logo.png' %}
{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
<div class="donate-sidebar">
<table style="background-color:#afe478;width:100%;">
<tr><td style="text-align:center;padding:10px;padding-bottom:10px;">
<div id="donate-box" class="toggle-unit"><h1 class="toggle-content">Support
    Now!</h1></div>

<h3 class="donate-box-highlight">Become a Supporter Now:</h3>

<p>Support us now!</p>

<h4><a href="#annual"><span class="donate-box-highlight">Annual supporter</span> via PayPal, ACH, or credit card.</a></h4>
<h4><a href="#monthly"><span class="donate-box-highlight">Monthly supporter</span> via PayPal, ACH, or credit card.</a></h4>
<h4><a href="#renewal"><span class="donate-box-highlight">Renewing Annual supporter</span> via PayPal, ACH, or credit card.</a></h4>
   
<span class="donate-box-highlight">Other annual supporters methods:</span>
<div class="toggle-unit">
    <h4 class="toggle-control" data-text="Wire Transfer" 
    data-expanded-text="Wire Transfer:">Wire Transfer</h4>
    <div class="toggle-content">
       Contact <a href="mailto:supporters@tix.sfconservancy.org">Conservancy
            by email</a><br/> for wire transfer instructions.<br/>
            Include  currency &amp; country.<br/>
    </div><!-- /.toggle-content -->
</div><!-- /.toggle.unit -->

<div class="toggle-unit">
    <h4 class="toggle-control" data-text="Paper Check" 
    data-expanded-text="Paper Check:">Paper Check</h4>
    <div class="toggle-content">
    Send paper check for $120 to:<br/>
    Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc.<br/>
    137 MONTAGUE ST  STE 380<br/>
    BROOKLYN, NY 11201-3548 &nbsp; USA<br/>
    Please write <q>SUPPORTER</q>, t-shirt size, if you are renewing, and if
    you want public acknowledgment in memo line. 
    </div><!-- /.toggle-content -->
</div><!-- /.toggle.unit -->

<p><a href="/donate">Even More Ways to Donate</a></p>
<!-- Flattr end -->
</td></tr></table>
</div>
<div class="content-with-donate-sidebar" id="formStart">
  <h1 class="appeal"><img class="appeal-header" alt="Become a Conservancy Supporter!" src="/img/conservancy-supporter-header.png"/></h1>

  
{% if partial_amount > 0 %}
  {% include "supporter/form_partial.html" with form_id="annual" min_amt=minimum_amount partial_amt=partial_amount article="an" only %}
{% else %}
  <div class="supporter-type-selector">
    <strong>Become a Supporter Now:</strong>
    <a id="annualSelector" href="#annual">Annual</a>
    | <a id="monthlySelector" href="#monthly">Monthly</a>
    | <a id="renewalSelector" href="#renewal">Annual Renew</a>
  </div>

  {% include "supporter/form_partial.html" with form_id="annual" min_amt=120 article="an" only %}

  {% include "supporter/form_partial.html" with form_id="monthly" min_amt=10 only %}

  <a name="renew" class="hidden"></a>
  {% include "supporter/form_partial.html" with form_id="renewal" min_amt=120 verb="renew" article="an" supptype="annual" only %}
{% endif %}

<span id="form-correction-needed" class="form-error">Please ensure all form data above is correct.</span>

<hr style="clear: both;"/>
<div class="expandable-section">

<div class="picture right" style="clear: right;">
  <img src="/img/2020_Sebro-Tony_CopyleftConf.jpg" alt="Tony Sebro speaks on stage in front of a slide comparing 1800&rsquo;s Eschatology and Golden Era Hip Hop">
  <p>Tony Sebro, delivering the keynote address at Copyleft Conf 2020. Photo copyright &copy; by Remy DeCausemaker, licensed <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></p>
</div>

<p>2020 has been a difficult year. We&rsquo;ve all scrambled to keep ourselves
and our loved-ones safe and healthy, coped with the isolation connected
to lockdowns and quarantines, and dealt with the
disconnection from our support networks — including friends, family
and even childcare. We worried about racial equality and hope the fight for
social justice will result in basic rights that everyone deserves.</p>
<p>Throughout all of this, Conservancy remained focused on its mission and on
the free and open source software community. While cheering those working to help prevent the
spread of COVID-19 and those fighting for racial equality, we know our
expertise, skills, and mission can only tangentially improve those situations. While
<a href="/blog/2020/apr/21/workduringcovid/">contributing
where we can</a>, we remain focused on the long-term nature of
software freedom. We keep working to grow and support FOSS
communities to plan for ethical technology down the road, so that software
freedom can be in the service of human freedom.</p>
<p>We&rsquo;re proud of how much we&rsquo;ve been able to accomplish in the last year,
even in the face of so many obstacles.</p>

<a class="expander" data-expand-link-text="(Expand All Sections)"/>

<h3 id="StayingConnected">Staying Connected</h3>
<div data-read-more="Read more about staying connected&hellip;">
<p>We helped folks stay connected, even when travel
and in-person meetings could not happen. We gathered digitally every
Thursday with all who wanted to join since early March to discuss
important issues or just reach out to other people who care about software freedom. The topics of these chats varied widely from
helping family and friends to use FOSS tools to discussing impactful
presentations concerting copyleft to how to dismantle systemic racism in free software to
important software freedom policy issues like standing up to fight the
DMCA.</p>
</div>

<h3 id="PayingPeople">Paying People to Work on Software Freedom</h3>
<div data-read-more="Read more about paying people to work on software freedom&hellip;">
<p>Our Outreachy internship program became even more essential during this
difficult time.  Everyone needs remote work now, <em>and</em> to learn how
to effectively work remotely.  This year, we achieved the most internships in
a single year yet!
We funded over 100 interns across two cohorts, generating
new code, new documentation, and essential FOSS contributions.  Outreachy
also prepares its interns for remote-work careers in FOSS, providing access to opportunities after their internship is over.
Since traveling is unsafe during a pandemic, interns could not use the Outreachy travel stipend for in-person conferences or events.
We moved quickly to pay all 127 active travel stipends simply as additional intern bonuses, helping both current interns and many alums during this stressful time.</p>
<p>We hear the news consistently that this pandemic has hit underrepresented groups harder for the same
reasons of systemic bias that we&rsquo;ve talked about for years in Outreachy. We&rsquo;ve worked to make the program more stable and to diversify its funding so that we can support even more internships going forward.
We&rsquo;re proud to help in our own small way.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s not just interns we fund.  Overall, Conservancy funded 27 contractors for a
total of about $650,000 and 16 grantees about $100,000 in the last 12 months.
That&rsquo;s three-quarters of a million dollars of funded FOSS work for the public good in just one year! And along with our internships, we spent a total of $1.5 million! The contractors spanned 15 projects and accomplished some impressive work. Our contractors report publicly on their work and you can see the <a href="https://reproducible-builds.org/reports/2020-10/">Reproducible Builds team</a> helping us know we can rely on the software we use, the <a href="https://sage.thesharps.us/2020/11/05/2020-10-outreachy-progress/">Outreachy team</a> organizing the complex and resource intensive internship program, <a href="https://github.com/mauriciofauth">phpMyAdmin</a>  continuing their longstanding work to maintain and improve one of the most popular MySQL administration tools and the <a href="https://godotengine.org/article/improvements-gpuparticles-godot-40">Godot team</a> as they work to make the best game engine ever.</p>
<p>Our contractors write, document, and share great
FOSS that benefits the general public; there is no other organization in
the world that pays contractors that much money with that as their primary
directive.  Sure, companies write lots of FOSS, but they focus only on projects that
benefit their profit motive and self-interest.  We fund FOSS development that benefits everyone and we
only fund software development that completely respects your software freedom and
rights.</p>
</div>

<h3 id="Policy">Policy</h3>
<div data-read-more="Read more about our policy work this year&hellip;">
<p>This year, we expanded our plans and involvement on key issues of software
freedom policy.  We are known throughout the FOSS community as the
organization that knows the details of FOSS policy — from project governance, to licensing to Codes of
Conduct — and gets those details
right.  We help our projects with everything from minor disagreements among
leadership to major licensing challenges that threaten the future of their
project.  While we can&rsquo;t tell every one of these stories on our blog,
just ask anyone in our Project Leadership Committees and they&rsquo;ll surely
tell you that Conservancy knows our stuff and handles any issues of this nature that occur.</p>
<p>Whenever possible, though, Conservancy does our policy work in public as key activists for software freedom. We <a href="/news/2020/jan/15/googlevoracle/">added our voice</a> to important legal cases like Google v. Oracle.  We provided context to interpret issues arising over the year, such as the launch of <a href="/blog/2020/jul/09/org-proliferation/">new organizational solutions for FOSS</a> and <a href="/blog/2020/oct/26/microsoft-github-riaa-youtube-dl/">DMCA aggression towards FOSS projects</a>.  We presented new ways to think about our critical problems, like legal mechanisms to achieve <a href="/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality/">copyleft equality</a> in the face of proprietary relicensing, ways to <a href="/blog/2019/dec/19/CPupdate/">support maintainers in employment contracts</a>, and extend protection of FOSS projects from <a href="/blog/2020/nov/13/widevine-dmca-takedown/">aggressive DMCA takedowns</a>.  We successfully filed for a <a href="/news/2020/jul/30/refile2020/">renewal of the Smart TV DMCA exemption</a> that we achieved in 2015.  We
went even further this year, and applied for <a href="/blog/2020/sep/16/dmca-exemptions-2020/">three more exemptions</a> that would protect the rights of those who use interconnected devices that have become critical fixtures in everyone&rsquo;s lives.</p>
<p>Most importantly, Conservancy remains the only charity actively fighting for the rights ensured by GPL on Linux. Our focus remains on IoT and embedded devices
that are now ubiquitous and used by everyone.  While we can only <a href="/blog/2019/oct/02/cambium-ubiquiti-gpl-violations/">occasionally discuss GPL enforcement matters publicly</a>, we launched this
year our <a href="/copyleft-compliance/enforcement-strategy.html">Strategic GPL Enforcement Plan</a>, and our companion <a href="/copyleft-compliance/firmware-liberation.html">Firmware Liberation Project</a>.  These two new initiatives have
just begun and they need your support and help to succeed.</p>
</div>

<h3 id="NewMembers">New Member Projects and New Board Member</h3>
<div data-read-more="Read more about our new member projects and board member&hellip;">
<p>In 2020, Conservancy welcomed two important new projects.  The <a href="/news/2020/jul/21/ICRjoins/">Institute for Computing in Research</a> runs a mentoring program designed to bridge inequities in tech by training teenage students to do rigorous scientific research using free software. <a href="/news/2020/sep/10/openwrt-joins/">OpenWrt</a> is a critical FOSS wireless router project that demonstrates the long lasting positive  results of strategic GPL enforcement. We also recognize that communities change over time. In addition to adding new projects, we took the time this past year to sunset some of our projects that no longer had a charitable focus.</p>
<p>We were also pleased to welcome <a href="/news/2020/jan/03/arandal/">Allison Randal</a>, a steadfast advocate of software freedom, to our Board of Directors.</p>
</div>

<h3 id="Events">Events and Conferences</h3>
<div data-read-more="Read more about our events and conferences&hellip;">
<p>FOSS events and conferences have always been an essential component of FOSS,
but this year, the pandemic thwarted our usual event system an infrastructure.
Conservancy has been at the center of transitioning events to online formats for
both our  member
projects and other third party  other FOSS conferences and event groups.  People around the world took huge losses in travel and event
cancellations, but we were adept.  We acted early and saved tens of thousands for
our member projects by negotiating with canceled venues.  We quickly adjusted
our travel policy to handle pandemic refund procedures, and we posted those changes publicly for other organizations to benefit.  When it&rsquo;s safe and healthy for everyone to travel again, we plan to organize Copyleft Conf, SeConf, and the dozens of in-person hackfests.  Meanwhile, we have and will continue to
help our projects cancel or reschedule their events and, as we did for our member projects like Racket and Selenium, to operate as virtual events this year.</p>
<p>We were lucky that Copyleft Conf 2020 was timed before the
pandemic was upon us, and that event was an amazing success.  We reached out and welcomed non-FOSS licensors who seek to use
<a href="https://archive.org/details/copyleftconf2020-ehmke">copyleft for social justice</a> to begin dialogue.  To this day, it remains the
only <a href="https://archive.org/details/copyleftconf2020-ethical-licensing">discussion</a> of its kind, and the <a href="https://archive.org/details/@sfconservancy?and[]=subject%3A%22copyleftconf2020%22">videos</a> are
still available for your virtual viewing.  We plan to turn
Copyleft Conf 2021 into a year-long series of online sessions about issues in copyleft
as we look hopefully forward to an in-person Copyleft Conf 2022.</p>
<p>We participated in many exciting events organized by others. Before travel was canceled, we  presented multiple talks at LCA and on the FOSDEM main stage, helped organize the Legal &amp; Policy DevRoom at FOSDEM, spoke to students and faculty at Oxford University, ran a workshop at Open Source 101 and delivered keynotes at CHAOSScon, Git Merge and the OpenUK Healthcare event. Once in-person events were no longer possible, we participated in many virtual events, including GUADEC, DebConf, ÖzgürKon and State of the Source. Our Executive Director was a featured speaker at VentCon, a conference urgently organized in May for folks working on FOSS projects for ventilators at a time when making sure that hospitals had enough access to ventilators to treat the surge in COVID-19 patients was a top concern.</p>
<p>We also remain ready to continue our work of helping to sponsor travel for our member projects and their events when travel becomes safe again. Before we ceased our conferences and travel, we funded over $60,000 worth of travel to important events, on pace for what could have been one of our biggest travel sponsorship years.  We invested remaining travel funds into improving online infrastructure and planning
for how to keep FOSS engaged without these essential in-person events.</p>
</div>

<h3 id="HelpUs">Help Us Continue our Mission</h3>
<p>We know this year brought unforeseen financial challenges.  Some of you have
faced unemployment, and many others are underemployed right now due to the
pandemic.  As you think about where to route your limited charitable
dollars this year, we ask that you think about how far your donation goes with Conservancy.  We&rsquo;ve remained a small, agile organization (some
even have called us scrappy) precisely because we have the most experienced
non-profit management team in FOSS.  We couldn&rsquo;t have predicted the
pandemic, but we did plan for the worst.  We&rsquo;re frugal, careful, and we plan ahead, so you can know that every
dollar you give to Conservancy is used to support critical work.  While companies sell
you products this end of year season, we offer you a chance to donate to something much bigger. By becoming a Conservancy Supporter, you can put
your money to work fighting for the freedom and rights of all software
users.</p>
</div>
{% endblock %}