Software Freedom Conservancy matching

Sat, 25 Feb 2017 16:15:10 +0100
conservancy, donation, lang/english, planet-debian

become a Conservancy supporter by February 28th and have your donation matched

Non-profits that provide project support have proven themselves to be necessary for the success and advancement of individual projects and Free Software as a whole. The Free Software Foundation (founded in 1985) serves as a home to GNU projects and a canonical list of Free Software licenses. The Open Source Initiative came about in 1998, maintaining the Open Source Definition, based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, with affiliate members including Debian, Mozilla, and the Wikimedia Foundation. Software in the Public Interest (SPI) was created in the late 90s largely to act as a fiscal sponsor for projects like Debian, enabling it to do things like accept donations and handle other financial transactions.

More recently (2006), the Software Freedom Conservancy was formed. Among other activities—like serving as a fiscal sponsor, infrastructure provider, and support organization for a number of free software projects including Git, Outreachy, and the Debian Copyright Aggregation Project—they protect user freedom via copyleft compliance and GPL enforcement work. Without a willingness to act when licenses are violated, copyleft has no power. Through communication, collaboration, and—only as last resort—litigation, the Conservancy helps everyone who uses a freedom respecting license.

The Conservancy has been aggressively fundraising in order to not just continue its current operations, but expand their work, staff, and efforts. They recently launched a donation matching campaign thanks to the generosity and dedication of an anonymous donor. Everyone who joins the Conservancy as a annual Supporter by February 28th will have their donation matched.

A number of us are already supporters, and hope you will join us in supporting the world of an organization that supports us.