Software Freedom Conservancy congratulates Microsoft for changing the terms of their app store to again allow commercial distribution of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Microsoft deleted their previously proposed text (originally slated to go into effect over the weekend) w … | Continue reading
Suppose you go to your weekly MyTown market. The market runs Saturday and Sunday, and vendors set up booths to sell locally made products and locally grown and produced food. On Saturday, you buy some delicious almond milk from a local vendor — called Al's Awesome Almond Mil … | Continue reading
Microsoft Will Even Prohibit Charitable FOSS Fundraising Through the “Microsoft Store”A few weeks ago, Microsoft quietly updated its Microsoft [app] Store Policies, adding new policies (which go into effect next week), that include this text:all pricing … must … [n]ot attempt to … | Continue reading
Those who forget history often inadvertently repeat it. Some of us recall that twenty-one years ago, the most popular code hosting site, a fully Free and Open Source (FOSS) site called SourceForge, proprietarized all their code — never to make it FOSS again. Major FOSS projects … | Continue reading
For Immediate Release — IRVINE, CA, USA —Software Freedom Conservancy announces it has succeeded in federal court withits motion to have its lawsuit against Vizio, Inc. remanded back to SuperiorCourt in Orange County, California. Vizio, Inc. previously filed a request to“remove” … | Continue reading
Possible Opportunity for the Public To Hear Oral Arguments in Key GPL Enforcement CaseIn our previous update regarding our copyleft enforcement lawsuit against Vizio, we talked about how Vizio “removed” the case to USA federal court (namely, the Central District of California) … | Continue reading
Today, Software Freedom Conservancy — a nonprofit organization centered around ethical technology, ensuring the right to repair, improve and reinstall software— announced that it now accepts copyright assignment from any copyright holders in any copylefted software. The self-ser … | Continue reading
Defending your right to modify and repair the software on your electronics has been a cornerstone of Software Freedom Conservancy since its inception. We defend these rights in a variety of ways: petitioning the Copyright Office to return our repair and modification rights, inve … | Continue reading
Bad Early Court Decision for AGPLv3 Has Not Yet Been AppealedWe at Software Freedom Conservancy proudly and vigilantly watch out for your rights under copyleft licenses such as the Affero GPLv3. Toward this goal, we have studied the Neo4j, Inc. v. PureThink, LLC ongoing case … | Continue reading
Toward a Broad Ethical Software Licensing CoalitionWe are passionate about and dedicated to the cause of software freedom and rights because proprietary software harmfully takes control of and agency in software away from users. In 2014, we started talking about FOSS as fundame … | Continue reading
Software Freedom Conservancy announces a Committee On AI-Assisted Programming and Copyleft to develop recommendations and plans for a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community response to the use of machine learning tools for code generation and authorship. The ethics and mo … | Continue reading
Inspired by the log4j situation, The White House recently met with Big Tech on the issue of security vulnerabilities in FOSSused in the nation's infrastructure. While we are glad these issues have received attention at the highest levels of the administration, we are concerned th … | Continue reading
Software freedom is our goal. Copyleft is a strategy to reach that goal. That tenet is oft forgotten by activists. Copyleft is even abused to advance proprietary goals. We too often see concern about the future of copyleft overshadow the necessary fundamental question: does a par … | Continue reading
Our Motion to Remand in Vizio Lawsuit Shows How the Law Brings Software Freedom to All Users Yesterday afternoon, we filed a Motion for Remand in ourlawsuit against Vizio for their flagrant GPL & LGPL violations, allegedwith great detail in our complaint in California statecourt. … | Continue reading
Donations will be matched (up to $159,191) thanks almost entirely to contributions by a few very generous anonymous donors. Contributions by individuals keep Software Freedom Conservancy afloat, and it's with your help that we are empowered to do the vital and sometimes overlooke … | Continue reading
Software freedom is critical to many of today’s most pressing social issues, but it’s only effective when FOSS is for everyone. Support Conservancy today to help make that happen! | Continue reading
Software Freedom Conservancy is proud to announce that its efforts to stand up for the rights of FOSS developers have been successful and that it has been granted almost all of the exemptions that it requested in the Librarian of Congress' recent rule making, according to the fin … | Continue reading
An analysis: Trump's Group has 30 days to remedy the violation, or their rights in the software are permanently terminatedIn 2002, we used phrases like “Web 2.0” and “AJAX”to describe the revolution that was happening in web technology for averageconsumers. This was just befor … | Continue reading
Trump's Group has 30 days to remedy the violation, or their rights in the software are permanently terminatedIn 2002, we used phrases like “Web 2.0” and “AJAX”to describe the revolution that was happening in web technology for averageconsumers. This was just before names like … | Continue reading
Two schools of thought about the purpose of copyleft have been at odds for some time. Simply put, the question is: are copyleft licenses designed primarily to protect the rights of large companies that produce electronics and software products, or is copyleft designed primar … | Continue reading
We are all human. We all make mistakes. This is true of everyone, including leaders in free software communities.We often end up needing to apologize after we hurt another person. Harming someone with your words or actions is mortifying and embarrassing.Your first reaction may be … | Continue reading
According to our Principles, we always begin discussions with GPL violators privately. Many of these discussions are ongoing at any time. Recently, we received many questions about GPLv2's requirements regarding installation of modified versions of GPLv2'd software on the devic … | Continue reading
Now that SS Public License has doubled its userbase (from one user to two users), folks have been asking us if Conservancy's view on the SS Public License has changed. It hasn't, and our previous two blog posts on MongoDB's license change and Copyleft Equality are still relevant … | Continue reading
Earlier in the year at Copyleft Conf, we had a few sessions dedicated to the Ethical License movement. During the conference, Coraline Ada Ehmke gave a moving talk outlining why technologists and software freedom activists in particular must act against atrocities, especially th … | Continue reading
A generous group of individuals has banded together to increase the amount of our match donation. This post is part of a series of interviews where these extraordinary folks tell us about why they care about software freedom and why they support Conservancy. Daniel Vetter works o … | Continue reading
MicroBlocks is a free/libre visual programming language that can be used to make programs that can run autonomously on many popular microcontrollers, allowing users of all technical abilities to program microcontrollers for a vast variety of purposes and 'real world' applications … | Continue reading
Godot is a free-and-open-source game engine that seeks to provide an accessible, common set of tools for 2D and 3D game development.Unlike its proprietary counterparts, Godot uses the MIT license, allowing creators to exercise full agency and ownership over the products of their … | Continue reading
The Reproducible Builds project seeks to integrate a set of development practices into software which emphasize build reproducibility, or the ability to ensure that a given build process will lead to verifiably integrous binaries which correspond to their source code. Reproducibi … | Continue reading
We at Conservancy spent much in the last week preparing our Long Comments in our DMCA exemptions requests for this round. When we announced these exemption filings, many of our Supporters asked us to “back up and explain” what this whole process is and why Conservancy parti … | Continue reading
Software Freedom Conservancy filed its long-form comments yesterday in supportof three DMCA exemption requests in the Library of Congress' Copyright Office Triennial Rulemaking process. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides this process to grant temporary exempti … | Continue reading
In my blog post twoweeks ago, I proposed — in light of increased DMCA takedownsagainst FOSS projects (and relatedly, increased enforcement of 17USC§1201)— that we ask for-profit copyright holders to agree to a pledge similarto GPLv3§8¶3. Simply put, proprietary copyright holders … | Continue reading
Just two weeks ago, my colleague Denver posted a criticism of Microsoft's GitHub for its capitulation to the RIAA takedown notice — which alleged, with specious evidence, that youtube-dl violated 17 USC § 1201. Frankly, this is the kind of behavior we'd expect from the RIAA — … | Continue reading
We were very excited to hear that Massachusetts voters approved a new right to repair law earlier this week. Laws like these are important tools in allowing us to control the devices that we use. In particular, we believe it is important that people be able to fix their own dev … | Continue reading
We learned on Friday that GitHub removed youtube-dl's primary collaboration forum and code repository from their site, which had been hosted at https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl. The action was in response to a DMCA Section 512 notice that the RIAA sent demanding removal of … | Continue reading
Software Freedom Conservancy, the only organization actively engaged in General Public License (GPL) enforcement and compliance work for Linux, announces today a new strategy toward improving compliance and the freedom of users of devices that contain Linux-based systems. The new … | Continue reading
Every three years, the US Copyright Office conducts a rulemaking process to consider exemptions to the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). These are the provisions of the law that make it a criminal offense to circumvent digital rights man … | Continue reading
PyPy has been a member project of Software Freedom Conservancy since 2010 and although it's been a mutually successful partnership, nothing lasts forever — especially in software. Today, Conservancy and PyPy announce that they are winding down their ten year relationship. PyPy wi … | Continue reading
About a year ago, I got talking with some friends in the tech industry about contracts. And it began to sound like something was very, very wrong.Working informally through personal networks of engineers, project managers, freelance designers, and many more, I ended up with a sma … | Continue reading