Software Freedom Conservancy

Software Freedom Conservancy is a not-for-profit charity that helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Conservancy provides a non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects. This allows FLOSS developers to focus on what they do best — writing and improving FLOSS for the general public — while Conservancy takes care of the projects' needs that do not relate directly to software development and documentation.

Recent News

November 29, 2016

Private Internet Access launches $50,000 match for Software Freedom Conservancy

Today on Giving Tuesday, Software Freedom Conservancy announces a generous match by Private Internet Access of $50,000 towards our current fundraiser.

“Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Compliance” Now in Chinese

Software Freedom Conservancy is pleased to announce that the Kaiyuanshe Legal Committee has translated the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Compliance in Chinese. Kaiyuanshe, roughly translated as open source alliance, is a group of enterprises, communities, and individuals in China supporting and promoting free and open source software. The document is available for download on Kaiyuanshe's web site and on Conservancy's site in HTML and as a PDF.

LibreHealth Announced by Key Community Members of OpenMRS & OpenEMR

PORTLAND, OREGON and BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, November 10, 2016 — Several senior contributors and leaders from OpenMRS & OpenEMR, the two leading open source Health IT platforms, have announced the formation of LibreHealth, a new initiative to expand on many years of work by those communities’ volunteers through increased focused on needs of its users in critical areas. After many years of growth under the sponsorship of organizations OEMR & OpenMRS Inc., key members of the two communities have joined forces to launch a successor free & open source software community to fulfill their vision of improved health outcomes around the world.

Conservancy Blog

Code Sprints, Contractors, and Commits: PyPy in 2016

Posted by Molly deBlanc on December 1, 2016

This series covers new developments and exciting projects taken on by Conservancy member projects. To learn more about Conservancy member projects, or the non-profit infrastructure support and services offered by the Conservancy, check out Conservancy’s Projects page!

Thanks to the generous support of donors and contributors, PyPy contracted Ronan Lamy at the beginning of June to help move forward work on Py3k. Lamy has been a Pypy core developer since 2012, and his work in refactoring old code has been invaluable to the project.

ContractPatch, Step 3: It's never too late

Posted by Tony Sebro on November 30, 2016

Everybody negotiates. While my particular career path has given me cause to negotiate regularly as part of my day job, we all have life experience with haggling, bartering, and finding common ground. So I'm sure I'm not alone in acknowledging that I get frustrated when someone on the other side of the table reopens a point of negotiation we've already agreed to and moved on from. Whether we're months into a lengthy contract drafting process for a deal or settlement, or just spit-balling possible fantasy basketball trades, people expect to make progress in a negotiation by reaching a consensus on each term and building from there. Having the other side "renege" on a settled term can feel counterproductive at best — and disingenuous at worst. Which is why most people are loathe to do it.

Recap: GPL Compliance BoF at Linux Plumbers’ Conference

Posted by Brett Smith on November 16, 2016

At the Linux Plumbers Conference a couple of weeks ago, Karen and I ran a Birds of a Feather session about our GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers. It was a success by every measure. Approximately seventy people attended, and about twenty of them participated in the discussion, covering a wide variety of issues around compliance. The interactive and inclusive format was ideal for us to provide additional information and get feedback from a lot of interested people. Many thanks to the Linux Plumbers Organizing Committee for scheduling a slot for us to run this session.

Support Conservancy

As a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity, Conservancy relies on charitable donations for its operations. Please join 884 others and become a Conservancy Supporter today and/or donate generously to help our work!

Follow Conservancy News & Blogs

There is a full site feed available (as well as separate feeds for the news items and blog posts). You can follow Conservancy on pump.io, Twitter, Youtube, Google+, and other social networks, too. Look for us everywhere and follow/like us!

You can also subscribe to Conservancy's low-traffic news list.

Learn More about Conservancy

An Overview of Conservancy… Conservancy's current member projects… Services Conservancy provides to its member projects… Conservancy's unique work defending and upholding copyleft licenses (e.g., the GPL) … Conservancy's Non-Profit Accounting Project …