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                        <option name="os0" id="os0" value="MenS">Men's S</option>

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                      <input type="radio" checked="checked" name="on1" value="publicAckYes" />Yes

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<hr style="clear: both;"/>

<h4>Software Freedom needs your help. </h4>

<p><em>Conservancy is continuing its shift towards being a

Supporter-driven organization so we can focus on critical free software 

issues.  Stand up for the GPL, support great 

member projects, and make your voice heard in support of free software. 

We're counting on you. 

<a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">Donate today!</a></em></p>

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<a href="/img/member-project-logos.png"><img class="appeal-left" src="/img/member-project-logos.png"/></a>

<p>

Software is critical to all of our infrastructure and as a society, we are deeply reliant on the software we use. Making sure our software is free and open is essential to knowing we'll be able to use tomorrow the solutions we invest in today. Software freedom is fundamental — we need it in order to effectively solve our problems in the long term. While the world today is powered increasingly by free software, many

people don't realize is how much support is needed to keep all of these

projects free and open. The work that we do every day ensures the success and

the continued freedom of the projects that the developers of our member

projects dedicate themselves to. Projects like Git, Samba,

Wine, BusyBox, QEMU, Inkscape, Selenium, and dozens more.</p>

<p>We are asking for you

  to <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">join us and become a

    Conservancy Supporter</a>. Last year, we said needed at least 750 

  of you to become annual Supporters just to continue our basic community

  services, and we thank you so much that you responded.  But 

  we still need 2,500 (total) of you to become annual Supporters to continue

  our licensing work through 2017, including defending copyleft.  If you don't become a Supporter now,

  we will be forced to radically restructure and wind down a substantial portion

  of our operations.</p>

<br clear="left"/>

<h4>2016 successes</h4>

<p>

Software Freedom Conservancy has had a lot of major successes this year:

<ul>

<li>We brought three new projects under the protection of Conservancy: <a href="https://forums.librehealth.io/">LibreHealth</a>, a critical initiative for health in free and open source software, <a href="https://www.spec-ops.io/">Spec-Ops</a>, a project dedicated to creating of open standards in critical areas, including payments and identity

and <a href="http://brew.sh/">Homebrew</a>, a software package manager for Apple's OS X. </li>

<li>We <a href="/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">supported

the lawsuit</a> Christoph Hellwig brought against VMware in Germany, the

first case on derivative works and the GPL. Christoph's case <a href="/news/2016/aug/09/vmware-appeal/">continues on appeal</a>.</li>

<li>We helped Conservancy projects Bro, Buildbot, and Godot receive Mozilla MOSS grants. Another Conservancy project, phpMyAdmin, successfully completed a thorough security audit as part of Mozilla's Secure Open Source Fund (no serious issues were found!).</li>

<li>We <a href="/news/2016/may/10/yorba-assigns-copyrights/">received an assignment of copyrights from the Yorba Foundation</a>, including Shotwell and Geary, in order to safeguard those copyrights for the future.</li>

<li>We conducted friendly discussions with companies out of compliance with

the GPL, seeking non-litigious resolutions in accordance with our <a href="/copyleft-compliance/principles.html">Principles</a>. We <a href="/news/2016/nov/03/linux-compliance-agreements/">published our template agreements</a> and held two <a href="https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/706361/a9ca4ee12c04d5d7/">feedback</a> <a href="/blog/2016/oct/27/feedback-gpl/"> sessions</a> to evaluate and improve our compliance efforts. We also worked with other community members to <a href="/blog/2016/jul/19/patrick-mchardy-gpl-enforcement/">bring clarity to international activities around GPL compliance</a> and help make the ecosystem safer for free software adoption. We stayed committed to providing <a href="/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/">straightforward analysis about the GPL</a>.</li>

<li>Our Executive Director, Karen Sandler, <a href="/news/2016/feb/23/FOSSA-testimony/">testified to the New York City Council Committee on Contracts in favor of the Free and Open Source Software Act and the Civic Commons Act</a> which would increase the use of free and open source software by New York City departments and agencies. Karen later in the year also <a href="/news/2016/oct/26/karen-sandler-oscon-eu-2016/">taught kids in London about free software</a>.</li>

<li>We <a href="/blog/2016/jun/06/openchain-spec/">commented on the OpenChain specification</a> to help make sure that the initiative by companies to collaboratively come up with standards and shared materials around compliance also meets community expectations about how compliance obligations are satisfied.</li>

<li>We supported, helped coordinate, and financially backed volunteers from 

  our member projects to organize seven conferences in three continents, where thousands of

  attendees learned about free and open source software.</li>

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  software, which included various different internships and contract

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<!-- <li>We processed and paid FIXME reimbursement requests to individuals doing work

  around the globe advocating for their free and open source software

  projects at conferences and other venues.</li> -->

<li>We processed and paid reimbursementrequests to individuals doing work

  around the globe advocating for their free and open source software

  projects at conferences and other venues. We also paid contractors to 

improve our projects' software.</li>

<li>We gave keynotes

at <a href="/news/2016/oct/26/karen-sandler-oscon-eu-2016/">OSCON EU</a>, <a href="/news/2016/sep/14/brocon-keynote/">BroCon</a>, <a href="https://nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-conference-keynote-speakers-and-launch-event/">the NextCloud conference</>, <a href="/blog/2016/aug/16/guadec-2016/">GUADEC</a>, <a href="/news/2016/aug/08/guadec-opensym/">OpenSym 2016</a>, <a href="https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/57/">Debconf</a>, <a href"/news/2016/may/31/kuhn-sweden-norway/">OSS 2016</a>, <a href="https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/collection/companies-free-software-and-you/">LibrePlanet</a>, <a href="https://www.openwest.org/keynote/">OpenWest</a>

and participated many more conferences all over the world. We also 

shared our expertise in initiatives

like <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft.org</a>. We gave

interviews and <a href="/blog/">blog posts</a>, and

Bradley and Karen released episodes of <a href="http://faif.us/">Free as in

Freedom</a>, all dedicated to discussing the important issues in software

freedom.</li>

</ul>

<p>And we did <strong>all of this</strong> with a tiny staff of only four full time employees.</p>

<p>We are focused on the most important ethical issues in software

freedom. We work tirelessly and don't shy away from difficult issues.</p>

<p>We're a unique organization &mdash; a staunch defender of copyleft (for Linux,

Debian and many of our member projects), a source of education and champions

of diversity for the community via Outreachy and other programs, and are the

legal home to 40 member projects that are essential to developing free

software.</p>

<p>We undertake these critical programs because they are essential to the

future of technology. We do them because they are right. <strong>But we cannot do

them without you.</strong> Last year you helped us to fundraising goals that didn't merely keep us running but even let us <a href="/news/2016/aug/22/brett-joins/">hire a new employee</a>. Yet even this staffing level isn't enough+} to handle our existing workload.</p>

<p>Our fiscal sponsorship model is not financially self-sustaining by itself:

we cannot afford even one staff member and basic overhead with the revenue we

take in from our projects.  With over 1,000 Supporters, we can now sustain the basic

work and we will survive.  But to thrive, and handle the really complex tasks like

copyright and licensing advice, and license compliance, we need even more

resources.  That's why our final target is 2,500 Supporters.  If you use

or care about our <a href="/members/current/">member projects</a>, which

include some of the most widely used free software, you can help them all

by <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">signing up as a Supporter

today</a>.</p>

<h4>Fighting for the GPL</h4>

<a href="/img/gpl-heart.png" alt="We ♥ GPL"><img class="appeal-right"  src="/img/gpl-heart.png"/></a>

<p>Many consider our GPL compliance and enforcement controversial.   We don't

think it is:  we stand up for the GPL at the request of our member projects, 

the Debian community, and members of the Linux kernel community. 

Most recently, that has resulted in our funding

of the <a href="/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">suit

against VMware</a>, which is the first lawsuit on derivative works and the

GPL (Christoph's case <a href="/news/2016/aug/09/vmware-appeal/">continues on appeal</a>). While this work is extremely important to the continued long-term

success of software freedom and copyleft, not to mention in the long-term 

interest of the industry as a whole, it makes fundraising from companies

very difficult.  Some companies 

have stopped funding us and some have even successfully pressured 

conferences to cancel or prevent talks on our compliance work. We do

this work because we think that it is good for everyone in the long run,

because we know it is the right thing to do, and because we know that we are

in the best position to do it. But that's not enough — you have to think it's

right too and <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">show us by

becoming a Supporter now</a>.</p>

<img alt="*** The Conservancy T-Shirt that Supporters Receive ***" class="appeal-left" src="/img/conservancy-t-shirt.jpg"/>

<h4>It's up to you</h4>

<p>Conservancy is deeply committed to supporting, promoting, developing, and

defending free and open source software.  We pursue our mission on various

fronts, and we're proud of what we've been able to accomplish in 2016.  To

do even more in 2017 and in the years to come, we need your help.</p>

<p>We believe 2017 will be a critical year for Conservancy, our member

projects, and our work.  We look forward to making huge strides in providing

software tools for public charities as well as services for developer 

communities.  We will continue to champion the rights of the public and the