Software Freedom Conservancy

Good news in the Vizio case! Last Friday Judge Sandy Leal rejected Vizio's Motion for Summary Judgment, allowing our full arguments to be presented and heard. Judge Leal's decision is clear: “Allowing third parties such as SFC to enforce their rights to receive source code is not only consistent with the GPLs’ objectives; it is both essential and necessary to achieve these objectives. Recipients of GPL-licensed software will be assured of their right to receive source code only if they have standing to enforce that right.”

You can read more about the decision and our own Motion for Summary Adjudication here: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2024/jan/03/vizio-sj-rejected/

Hope everyone has a wonderful last day of 2023. Here's to much more #softwarefreedom in 2024!

Our last (and year end!) chat with SFC leadership is at the top of the hour: `date -d 'Dec 29 21:00 UTC`
Join us to ask questions and learn what SFC is up to on BigBlueButton: https://bbb.sfconservancy.org/b/pon-nxm-psh-pek

Can't wait to see you there!

Thank you so much for helping us cross the 50% threshold of our fundraiser! As the year ends, it's a great time to make a donation to double your contribution and make sure you squeeze in (US) tax deductible donations:

https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/#annual

SFC leadership is hosting another Q&A at 00:00 UTC (in a little over 5 hours). Come learn directly from our Executive Director @karen and Policy Fellow, Hacker-in-Residence, and Treasurer Bradley M. Kuhn about what @conservancy has been up to and how you can get involved!

https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/announce/2023/000118.html

We're getting close to halfway on our fundraiser! Please help us meet out match goal, every dollar counts double until January 15th! Now is the time to give the gift 🎁 of Software Freedom For All by powering our mission for the next year. https://sfconservancy.org/donate

Join the Q&A coming up in an hour and 10 minutes, where you can talk to some of SFC's leadership and ask them whatever you want about our work!

https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/announce/2023/000118.html

Join the Q&A coming up in an hour and 10 minutes, where you can talk to some of SFC's leadership and ask them whatever you want about our work!

https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/announce/2023/000118.html

Join the Q&A coming up in an hour and 10 minutes, where you can talk to soem of SFC's leadership and ask them whatever you want about our work!

https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/announce/2023/000118.html

Is Tesla open source? Roadster certainly isn't...
Read more about our Director of Compliance's thoughts on how the Tesla efforts don't meet compliance standards and how that's harming consumers and endangering people. GPL compliance is not just a theoretical issue!

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/dec/21/tesla-no-source-code-no-safety/

Come read our Executive Director @karen literally heartfelt blog post about her personal quest for software freedom on our blog: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/dec/19/a-note-from-karen-2023/

Our Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn was quoted extensively in a report by the FTC "Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Creative Economy Staff Report: Perspectives and Takeaways": https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/12/ftc-staff-report-details-key-takeaways-ai-creative-fields-panel-discussion

You can read more about the report and ongoing work of the FTC here: https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/2023/12/elevating-voices-creative-professionals-report-quote-book

We've almost crossed $50k in our fundraiser! Help us meet our match by donating: https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/

We're hard at work ensuring your software freedom and digital rights. Just in the past week and a half, we've had major accomplishments:
* We joined an amicus curiae brief in Green v. Department of Justice along with other organizations. https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/dec/06/sfc-amicus-curiae-in-dmca-suit/
* We started the December Outreachy round! 59 interns in eleven different countries will start work this week in 21 different FOSS communities. We can’t wait to see all that the interns learn and accomplish.
* Since we first filed comments in the U.S. Copyright Office’s so-called “Artificial Intelligence Study”, we've responded to Microsoft's comments to make sure we stay engaged and represent community over corporate interests. https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/dec/11/response-to-bigtech-arguments-copyright-office/
* In our lawsuit against Vizio, we've filed a we submitted our “Motion for Summary Adjudication”, seeking a pre-trial ruling on two key arguments in the case. First, the motion seeks to establish that distributors of GPL’d and LGPL’d software (such as Vizio) have a legal duty to the recipients of the software to provide the complete, corresponding source code (CCS) upon request. Second, we counter Vizio’s claims that the contractual rights under the GPL Agreements are preempted by copyright law. in our view, third parties (i.e., consumers and users of the devices) do have a right to CCS — even if they are not a copyright holder. A blog post about this is soon to follow!

Continuing our engagement with the Copyright office on AI issues, we've responded to some comments that Big Tech have made. @conservancy continues to show up to defend your rights regarding copyleft licenses.

You can read our rebuttal here: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/dec/11/response-to-bigtech-arguments-copyright-office/

In collaboration with many other organizations, @conservancy contributed to an amicus curiae brief in Green v. Department of Justice. Helping bring a software freedom lens to criticizing DMCA §1201, SFC provided our expert opinion on why the DMCA is detrimental to digital rights. You can read the brief and more about the case here: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/dec/06/sfc-amicus-curiae-in-dmca-suit/

On this #GivingTuesday, we'd like to highlight some of the work over the past year that your donations and sustaining memberships have supported. Thanks for all your support!

* Our ongoing case against Vizio to protect your rights as third-party beneficiaries of the GPL.

* The 1000th intern to go through the incredible @Outreachy program!

* Ran our first full 4 day conference, with another in the works for July 2024. #FOSSY

* Spoke with policy makers and governments about the importance of FOSS in AI regulation, proprietary software mergers and submitted comments to NIST and the FTC.

* Got involved with the Right to Repair movement, specifically so we can highlight the needs of Software Right to Repair.

You can read more and donate here: https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/#YearInReview

Thanks to the @sourceware PLC for their kind words of support for @conservancy https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/nov/27/sourceware-thanks-conservancy/
Their piece talks about the 6 month anniversary of joining SFC, their roadmap for the future and why you should support our fundraiser. Thanks to them for the incredible efforts they've made over 25 years of hosting free software infrastructure, and being an incredible example of a community lead project.

Happy Thanksgiving! We're so thankful that only two days into our fundraiser and we've already raised over $13,000. We're almost to 10% of our $161,729.
Renewing your Sustainership early encourages new donors, so help us make a big push! https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/

And for more information about our fundraiser you can see our announcement page here: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/nov/21/2023-fundraiser/