Software Freedom Conservancy

My favourite tech non-profit is Software Freedom Conservancy, I think it does quite well on these points. https://sfconservancy.org/

I'll make a plug for https://sfconservancy.org who sponsor many open source projects including Clojars (which I'm a maintainer of), and Clojurists Together. They do great work and deserve your support.

Hey, I genuinely appreciate it and I am going to send you a mail right away. I didn't know libraries were such a massive way and I don't think we really have libraries here, atleast not in my city that I can think of a non profit library, I might need to search though. and the funny thing is that some people would just have a bunch of sitting rooms and call them library here. I have definitely thought about this more and the only nuance that comes up is that i haven't even gotten a degree right now and its something that I plan to do. Its just that I want to have an option to have a cs job too if things don't work out, and I personally don't know but as I said I am pretty frugal and I don't know how others feels but I don't know if anybody would even donate or my project would have even value if I am being honest. I am really a pessimist sometimes.. Its just that I would love to do these things but I would also want to just earn barely enough that my parents wouldn't think that I am doing something foolish in my life either and I can be respected enough in the society as well, these feelings really grapple me if I can be honest... Honestly, I will keep in touch with ya and my first plan of action is trying to write my first draft of a manifesto of sorts on what I want to bring to the table in a similar fashion to how I had written the comment but maybe better... I have also thought more and I am thinking something like fiscal sponsorship might be the right way atleast…

https://sfconservancy.org/llm-gen-ai/llm-backed-generative-ai-recommen… This linked page has the list of recommendations, which seem reasonable regardless of your position on Gen AI (imo)

It'd be great if open firmware could be commercially viable. Finding a business model is hard. The OpenWRT One [1] sponsored by the Software Conservancy [2] and manufactured by Banana Pi [3] works lovely. [1] https://openwrt.org/toh/openwrt/one [2] https://sfconservancy.org/activities/openwrt-one.html [3] https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/OpenWRT-One/BananaPi_OpenWRT-One

It's an excellent choice. Though Microsoft alone should be a sufficient answer. Many people will never interact with github projects because it requires an account with the most unethical company that ever existed. https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/

Having read [1] in particular, I think you're right and I was mistaken. Thanks! That's quite eye-opening for me, as I followed discussion about GPLv2 and GPLv3 for years yet didn't know about this view of GPLv2 and reinstallation. Having heard so much about anti-Tivoization when the GPLv3 was being drafted, and the discussions about it on linux-kernel when Linus decided the kernel will remain GPLv2-only, I was left with the impression that the GPLv2 only required the provision of source code, build scripts, etc. but not the ability to reinstall a new version. [1] makes a pretty good case that the ability to reinstall is also required GPLv2, and I'm heartened that's how Tivo saw it too. [1] https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-the-gpl-rig…

You probably missed the news that RedHat decided to systematically violate the GPL: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/ tl;dr: They no longer publish source packages except to paying customers. If the paying customers republish the source, then RedHat closes the account. I'm surprised none of the upstream developers have sued them for violating the license. There's no way I'd trust an organization that was behaving so unethically with control over my machine's package manager. Anyway, I've been pretty happy with Devuan (Debian without SystemD). I find it much more stable than Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, etc., and all the userspace stuff I care about works great.

I donate to the Software Freedom Conservancy and recommend that anyone who cares about software freedom and right to repair also give what they can: https://sfconservancy.org/donate/

> Joe Hacker also needs a seat at this table. Any suggestions on organizations? These come to mind, but there must be others. Free Software Foundation, https://www.fsf.org/ NLnet, https://nlnet.nl/project SPI, https://www.spi-inc.org/projects Software Conservancy, https://sfconservancy.org

That would be the SFC (https://sfconservancy.org/) I believe. Although Onyx is a Chinese company so little can be done.

This is true. The question to me is: does the party to whom you give the rights and authority subscribe to community-oriented FOSS license compliance principles? [1] [1] https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html

The danger is specifically to the copyright holders of Linux - the authors who have code in the kernel. If they do not defend their copyright, then it is not strong and can be broken in certain scenarios. "Linux copyright holders in the GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers believe that distribution of ZFS binaries is a GPL violation and infringes Linux's copyright." Linux bundling ZFS code would bring this text against the GPL: "You may not offer or impose any terms on any Covered Software in Source Code form that alters or restricts the applicable version of [the CDDL]." Ubuntu distributes ZFS as an out of tree module, which taints the kernel at immediately at installation. Hopefully, this is enough to prevent a great legal challenge. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/

The FSF says they only care about the GNU project license violations. https://sfconservancy.org/ has an actual record of fighting against license violations.

An earlier poster mentioned SFLC: https://softwarefreedom.org/about/contact The Software Freedom Conservancy is another place to look. They defend the GPL for a number of member projects, much like FSF does for GNU projects. (I don’t know how a project would go about becoming a member of the Conservancy) https://sfconservancy.org/

Maybe the Software Freedom Conservancy would be more suitable? https://sfconservancy.org/

Yes they closed the enterprise source code. They first tried adding the commons clause, then when that did not accomplish what they wanted, they closed the enterprise source code. The kicker is that this was not because of behemoth like Amazon or Oracle, it was because of a single individual… (guess who?) Good read to get a better picture: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/mar/30/neo4j-v-purethink-open-sour…

eff doesn't do license enforcement. Software freedom conservancy is the organization to support in this case: https://sfconservancy.org/

Software Freedom Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that […] provides a non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects. https://sfconservancy.org/

What's really required is to build a community large enough that the 0.1% of people who can run it are big enough to have a group in charge, set up a foundation etc etc. It's just like going from a monarchy to a democracy, hard, takes ages, fails a lot. That won't work for most small projects though, so orgs like https://sfconservancy.org/ exist. Not sure what other options like SFC exist, and the differences between them though. At a minimum you'd want them to be in charge, and fire the current lead developer if they go rogue.

Strangely the article didn't mention https://copyleft.org/ and although it mentions Bradley Kuhn there could have at least been a link to Software Freedom Conservancy https://sfconservancy.org/

There are some organisations that handle paperwork for many open source projects. You can donate to these and mark you donations for specific projects or towards "overhead". The two I've donated to are Software in the Public Interest ( https://www.spi-inc.org/ ) The Software Conservancy ( https://sfconservancy.org/ )

https://sfconservancy.org I almost got my employer to donate to them and have a staff member give us a presentation. That fell apart, but it's a thing that can happen.

This is the same Ubiquiti that's does not abide by the GPL for the modified linux kernel they use[1][2][3]. Which is really too bad as I had been ready to recommend their gear to a couple of businesses. [1] https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2019/oct/02/cambium-ubiquiti-gpl-violat… [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9331512 [3] http://web.archive.org/web/20170317174847/http://libertybsd.net/ubiqui…

Isn't the copyright holder in this case "anyone who has contributed to the Linux kernel"? I have to imagine that includes the FSF. Anyway, one of the GGP's (great grandparent's) links indicate the software freedom conservatory did open a lawsuit just last month. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2019/oct/02/cambium-ubiquiti-gpl-violat…

It looks like BMW is not in compliance. As far as I can tell, no one has done a complete corresponding source (CCS) check on that code like we did for Tesla: https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/ccs-review/2018-May/000000.h… A brief look at the code BMW provided suggests they haven't provided any information on how to build or install the code, both of which are required by the GPL. If you do find or receive source code from other car manufacturers, please try to build it before concluding that they are compliant. If you have trouble, please report this issue to us at https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/#reporting and we'll do our best to help.

Maybe the Software Freedom Conservancy[1] or Software in the Public Interest[2] could help open source Android apps take donations. [1]: https://sfconservancy.org/ [2]: https://www.spi-inc.org/

Not only having code stolen without attribution, but stolen by the company running AdBlock, who appears to have just co-opted the uBlock brand. This is GPL'ed code being stolen with clearly deceptive and rent-seeking behavior. I wonder if the Software Freedom Conservancy would be interested in taking a look? https://sfconservancy.org/

I posted my response on a blog post at: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/oct/16/mongodb-copyleft-drafting/ TL;DR: while vmbrasseur of OSI does say "what's done is done" in comments here, I think the OSI shouldn't accept the proposal as submitted, and should demand that licenses submitted them to have gone through a prior public drafting process. This is particularly important for licenses whose stated goal is to make fundamental changes to how copyleft works. GPLv3 and (even better) copyleft-next made this the standard of how new license drafts are done, and we should follow that standard.

The Software Freedom Conservancy might be able to help: https://sfconservancy.org/