Software Freedom Conservancy

We'll be at @socallinuxexpo in Pasadena, March 9-12th! Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn is presenting "Learning From the Big Failures To Improve FOSS Advocacy and Adoption".
If you'd like to volunteer to at our booth or interested in attending, please email info@sfconservancy.org

Neo4j has not yet succeeded in eviscerating the AGPLv3. Check out our Policy Fellow's expert report in the Neo4j v. PureThink case: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/feb/09/kuhn-neo4j-purethink-expert-report/ Great analysis of the interesting ways AGPLv3 anticipated defending your software rights and freedoms

We recently put out our Call for Proposals for community tracks for our conference FOSSY happening July 13-16th in Portland, OR.
Come talk to us about what you'd like to host a track about for our conference!

We're at @fosdem this weekend!
Come talk to us about our license compliance work, diversity and inclusion efforts like @outreachy and what our member projects have been up to.
Find us in the stand hall (K building) near the west door.

Today we are officially opening our call for track proposals for our first annual conference FOSSY! We are looking for community driven tracks that can balance important and in depth technical and non-technical issues, while uplifting contributors of all experiences. If you are interested in hosting a track, please see our guidelines and expectations and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions! You can reach us at conference@sfconservancy.org

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jan/31/fossy-call-for-tracks/

https://sfconservancy.org/fossy/community-tracks/

As the class action lawsuit brought by Matthew Butterick against GitHub, Microsoft and OpenAI continues, we want to reiterate our Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html In our opinion, Copilot undermines copyleft licensing and makes egregious license violations easier than ever. Rather than primarily seeking financial compensation, we would hope this case strengthens the legal precedent for protecting users under copyleft principles.
See our previous writings on the case: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/nov/04/class-action-lawsuit-filing-copilot/

Tomorrow @karen will be giving a lecture "Software Rights: Accountability and Autonomy In Our Technology" at 15:00 UTC in recognition of the honorary doctorate being bestowed by KU Leuven, to read more about the Patroonsfeest celebration see our news item https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/jan/30/karen-honorary-doctorate/

Addendum: Our posted time is incorrect, it is actually 16:00 UTC+1, so 15:00 UTC, 10:00 ET, 7:00 Pacific Time.

Our Executive Director @karen is being honored with a doctorate from KU Leuven for her incredible work in the advocacy for software freedom, especially in relation to medical devices.
She will be giving a livestreamed lecture tomorrow at 16:00 UTC.
https://www.kuleuven.be/events/en/lecture-karen-sandler-softwarerights

Just over 2 weeks until @fosdem ! We're so excited to see everyone in person and hoping we can wrangle some volunteers to help out at our booth to pass out stickers and represent @conservancy
If you are interested, please reach out to info@sfconservancy.org

Our fundraiser concluded with 34% over the match goal for software rights and freedom! Thanks to everyone who has donated or become a sustaining member of Software Freedom Conservancy. Your contributions help power this organization dedicated to pursuing software freedom for all.
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/jan/16/2023-fundraiser-successful/

@Natureshadow We believe our mission and work stands on its own and we strive not define ourselves in terms of what other people and organizations are doing. Rather, we do what we think is most urgently needed to to defend and advance software rights and freedoms. We're cognizant that donors face difficult choices with limited donation dollars, but we never try to convince people to donate to us instead of other orgs. If you like our work, please donate.
If you don't, then of course don't.

@Natureshadow Thanks for reaching out - we just searched and don't see any questions from you that have gone unanswered. Please do feel free to get in touch by emailing info@ or catching us on our xmpp channel. We do our best to answer questions, but we also are a small staff so please be patient if you do reach out or if we somehow missed it. We do hope that you decide to become a donor to our organization.

Good news + a new challenge: we met our fundraising match over 2 weeks early! And thanks to anonymous donors, we have extended the match by $12k! Please help us reach this stretch goal by 1/15 by donating or spreading the word. https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/

US donors, tomorrow is the last day for tax deductible donations during this tax year!

And whether you contribute financially to SFC or give your time to #softwarefreedom, we so appreciate you and can't wait to work together in 2023!

Happy Holidays, we hope you and yours had a great holiday weekend! We're in the last week of 2022 so now is a great time to spread holiday cheer and help us meet the remaining $12,965 of our match https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer

@markgalassi @karen We'll be sending an email to people who have donated in the past year and our current sustainers. So be on the look out :)

Our Director of Compliance recently submitted a recommendation to the FTC for adding software repair instructions to EnergyGuide labeling.
You can read the news post here:
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/dec/21/ftc-comments-free-software-labeling/

If you are a donor or sustainer of @conservancy, we invite you next week Wednesday the 28th 22:00 UTC to join @karen and Bradley M. Kuhn.
We will also host a session Thursday the 29th at 15:00 UTC to catch other timezones.

There are lots of ways to donate including PayPal, wire transfers, and don't forget to check with your employer about their match program! With the end of the year coming up it's a great time to squeeze in some more tax deductible donations! https://sfconservancy.org/donate/

If we can raise $1,000 a day until January 15th, we'll be over our goal! If you donate at the $120/yr or more level you will receive our sustainers only tshirt: https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/