Software Freedom Conservancy

Software Freedom Conservancy | @conservancy@social.sfconservancy.org

Software Freedom Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) public charity that acts as a non-profit home for Free, Libre, and Open Source Software projects.

https://sfconservancy.org

As the FTC panel begins https://kvgo.com/ftc/Creative-Economy-and-Generative-AI-October-4-2023 we heard from FTC Commission Slaughter: "... copyright is not the only tool." to protect our labor and works.

Be sure to tune into the FTC panel about “Creative Economy and Generative AI” featuring @conservancy Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn at 19:00 UTC
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/oct/04/ftc-ai-panel/

Our Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn will be on the FTC round table discussion "Creative Economy and Generative AI" tomorrow. He's joining a panel of artists, policy makers, union organizers and other activists as the one to represent the FOSS and greater software communities. You can watch the webcast at 19:00 UTC: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events/2023/10/creative-economy-generative-ai

Our Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn will be on the FTC round table discussion discussion "Creative Economy and Generative AI" tomorrow. He's joining a panel of artists, policy makers, union organizers and other activists as the one to represent the FOSS and greater software communities. You can watch the webcast at 19:00 UTC: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events/2023/10/creative-economy-generative-ai

@clacke @michelin @josh Not yet, but we're in the process of trying to set it. We'll make an announcement when we're locked in!

@fell @anjan We just got the videos up! You can see our blog post here: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/sep/14/fossy-videos/

The FOSSY videos are up! Check out our blog post for more information here: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/sep/14/fossy-videos/

Thanks to all our speakers, AV team, volunteers and sponsors for making FOSSY happen. We can't wait to do it again next year!

Karen Sandler is this September’s star of passbolt’s Women In STEM series. 🤩

@karen is Executive Director of the @conservancy

She’s provided legal counsel to open source foundations, supported several nonprofits, delivers lectures, and helps lead Outreachy, a program for underrepresented individuals in tech. ❤️

👏 Let’s take a moment to celebrate all of her incredible contributions. 🍾

"Free and open source software is not necessarily better or more secure than proprietary software, but it does mean that we have a chance. Instead of having to wait for the company in question to acknowledge that there is a problem and to do something about it, anyone can take action.”

- Karen Sandler

I'd like to announce that I've recently got a new mailing list set up, "legislation-discuss", with the @conservancy for discussing related legislation; the introductory message to it can be found here: https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/legislation-discuss/2023-September/000000.html
Please subscribe if you're interested in the topic!

Denver Gingerich, our Director of Compliance, was interviewed on @richlitt podcast SustainOSS at #FOSSY. A great listen if you want to learn about recent compliance developments at SFC and hear about some of Denver's other work. Thanks so much to Rich for bringing SustainOSS to #FOSSY https://podcast.sustainoss.org/195

We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”!
After the recent change of the terms of service to Zoom, Software Freedom Conservancy seeks to bring light to corporate abuse of power and focus on making FOSS solutions to these proprietary requirements.
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/aug/15/exit-zoom/

Sourceware 25 Roadmap

https://sourceware.org/sourceware-25-roadmap.html

Preparing for the next 25 years.

In the last couple of years we have started to diversify our hardware partners, setup new services using containers and isolated VMs, investigated secure supply chain issues, added redundant mirrors, created a non-profit home, collected funds, invested in open communication, open office hours and introduced community oversight by a Sourceware Project Leadership Committee with the help from @conservancy

Our Director of Compliance discusses the Rust Foundation's (draft) trademark policy by looking at what we can learn from the sometimes too exciting history of software freedom trademark policies

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jul/27/trademark-history-and-rust/

The first video from #FOSSY is out! 🎉 If you have been following our writing, you know our Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn wrote about the recent RHEL policy change. As a continuation of that discussion, he led a keynote panel at the conference to discuss the issue with representatives from AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux and Oracle.

You can view the video and more information here: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jul/19/rhel-panel-fossy-2023/

@icedquinn It's marked as proprietary software with 🙅! Our speaker policy required speakers to label all proprietary software, and this one was no different.

Celebrating @outreachy this morning for having now provided more than 1,000 paid open source internships for underrepresented people 🥳

Grateful to @gnome and @conservancy for their role in backing this important program, and to @sphakos, @karen, and @anna for their work driving it, and to Marina Zhurakhinskaya for the legacy she has left by founding it ❤️

A photo of Sage, Anna, and Karen on stage sitting in front of a big slide noting Outreachy has provided internships for 1,039 people!

Pono from @conservancy talks about how he used free software to plan his wedding at #FOSSY
No room for proprietary software here!
Pono makes an X with his arms to notify the audience of proprietary software.

It's the last day of #FOSSY 😭
We are so thrilled with how many of you came out and celebrated software freedom, community building and an introspective look at our communities.
Our final keynote today at 9:30 local time will host @karen @sphakos @anna talking about Outreachy and their 1000th intern!

At #FOSSY, Denver Gingerich explains cultural changes needed to improve acceptance of those who make abnormal but important choices for their privacy & software rights. Denver posed with his preferred “phone” — which generates no e-waste (it's compostable!) & does not have the typical anti-features most modern phones have.

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