The global COVID-19 pandemic has changed everyone's lives, and taken the lives of so many of our family members and friends. For those of us that have been spared, our lives must continue, and this is particularly true for those who work in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS … | Continue reading
I would not have imagined even two years ago that expansion of copyleft would become such an issue of interest in software freedom licensing. Historically and for good reason, addition of new forms of copyleft clauses has moved at a steady pace. The early 2000s brought networ … | Continue reading
Since we've launched ContractPatch, I've heard a lot of feedback from free software contributors about the successes they've had in negotiating their employment agreements. While not everyone has achieved full modification to the agreement, so far everyone who's reported back had … | Continue reading
Our Executive Director, Karen Sandler, has warned for years about the dangers of lawsuits between two for-profit companies engaged in a legal dispute in which the GPL is tangentially featured. Unlike Conservancy, companies don't use legal action as the last resort, and they don' … | Continue reading
It has been many years since we started working with Tesla to help them resolve their ongoing GPL violations. However, Tesla has still not provided the necessary source code for their cars (a benefit of ownership enshrined in the GPL, which Tesla chooses to use) and the incomple … | Continue reading
We are passionate about software freedom because we know it is a necessary precondition to safe and effective software that we can rely on in the long term. We fight for copyleft because it is a powerful tool to help us actually control the technology that is being increasingly e … | Continue reading
We recently hired our newest employee at Conservancy, a Technical Bookkeeper. Adding one more employee to our small staff is a significant change for our organization and we wanted to conduct both an efficient and as unbiased as possible hiring process. This can be a challenge f … | Continue reading
Conservancy dedicates itself to fighting for software freedom for as long as it takes. GPL enforcement requires steadfast, unwavering diligence. Two years have passed since Christoph Hellwig announced his intention to appeal the Hamburg District Court's decision, and more than th … | Continue reading
More than 15 years ago, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community activists successfully argued that&r licensing proliferation was a serious threat to the viability of FOSS. We convinced companies to end the era of “vanity” licenses. Different charities — from the Open … | Continue reading
Folks lauded today that Microsoft has joined the Open Invention Network (OIN)'s limited patent non-aggression pact, suggesting that perhaps it will bring peace in our time regarding Microsoft's historical patent aggression. While today's announcement is a step forward, we call … | Continue reading
In discussion of the Linux project's new Code of Conduct, a few people have suggested that contributors who reject the Code of Conduct might disrupt Linux licensing in response. This seems unlikely to most, but to ensure that uncertainty around this issue casts no shadow over co … | Continue reading
Proprietary software has always been abouta power relationship. Copyright and other legal systems give authors the powerto decide what license to choose, and usually, they choose a license thatfavors themselves and takes rights and permissions away from others.The so-called “Co … | Continue reading
Software Freedom Conservancy and the Racket community are pleased to announce that Racket is Conservancy's newest member project. Racket is a general-purpose programming language as well as the world’s first ecosystem for developing and deploying new languages. Racket comes with … | Continue reading
Conservancy rarely talks publicly about specifics in its ongoing GNU General Public License (GPL) enforcement and compliance activity, in accordance with our Principles of Community Oriented GPL Enforcement. We usually keep our compliance matters confidential — not for our o … | Continue reading