the free and open source software community. While cheering those working to help prevent the

spread of COVID-19 and those fighting for racial equality, we know our

expertise, skills, and mission can only tangentially improve those situations. While

<a href="/blog/2020/apr/21/workduringcovid/">contributing

where we can</a>, we remain focused on the long-term nature of

software freedom. We keep working to grow and support FOSS

communities to plan for ethical technology down the road, so that software

freedom can be in the service of human freedom.</p>

<p>We&rsquo;re proud of how much we&rsquo;ve been able to accomplish in the last year,

even in the face of so many obstacles.</p>

<h3 id="StayingConnected">Staying Connected</h3>

<p>We helped folks stay connected, even when travel

and in-person meetings could not happen. We gathered digitally every

Thursday with all who wanted to join since early March to discuss

important issues or just reach out to other people who care about software freedom. The topics of these chats varied widely from

helping family and friends to use FOSS tools to discussing impactful

presentations concerting copyleft to how to dismantle systemic racism in free software to

important software freedom policy issues like standing up to fight the

DMCA.</p>

</div>

<h3 id="PayingPeople">Paying People to Work on Software Freedom</h3>

<p>Our Outreachy internship program became even more essential during this

difficult time.  Everyone needs remote work now, <em>and</em> to learn how

to effectively work remotely.  This year, we achieved the most internships in

a single year yet!

We funded over 100 interns across two cohorts, generating

new code, new documentation, and essential FOSS contributions.  Outreachy

also prepares its interns for remote-work careers in FOSS, providing access to opportunities after their internship is over.

Since traveling is unsafe during a pandemic, interns could not use the Outreachy travel stipend for in-person conferences or events.

We moved quickly to pay all 127 active travel stipends simply as additional intern bonuses, helping both current interns and many alums during this stressful time.</p>

<p>We hear the news consistently that this pandemic has hit underrepresented groups harder for the same

reasons of systemic bias that we’ve talked about for years in Outreachy. We’ve worked to make the program more stable and to diversify its funding so that we can support even more internships going forward.

We&rsquo;re proud to help in our own small way.</p>

total of about $650,000 and 16 grantees about $100,000 in the last 12 months.

That&rsquo;s three-quarters of a million dollars of funded FOSS work for the public good in just one year! And along with our internships, we spent a total of $1.5 million! The contractors spanned 15 projects and accomplished some impressive work. Our contractors report publicly on their work and you can see the <a href="https://reproducible-builds.org/reports/2020-10/">Reproducible Builds team</a> helping us know we can rely on the software we use, the <a href="https://sage.thesharps.us/2020/11/05/2020-10-outreachy-progress/">Outreachy team</a> organizing the complex and resource intensive internship program, <a href="https://github.com/mauriciofauth">phpMyAdmin</a>  continuing their longstanding work to maintain and improve one of the most popular MySQL administration tools and the <a href="https://godotengine.org/article/improvements-gpuparticles-godot-40">Godot team</a> as they work to make the best game engine ever.</p>

<p>Our contractors write, document, and share great

FOSS that benefits the general public; there is no other organization in

the world that pays contractors that much money with that as their primary

directive.  Sure, companies write lots of FOSS, but they focus only on projects that

benefit their profit motive and self-interest.  We fund FOSS development that benefits everyone and we

only fund software development that completely respects your software freedom and

rights.</p>

</div>

<h3 id="Policy">Policy</h3>

<p>This year, we expanded our plans and involvement on key issues of software

freedom policy.  We are known throughout the FOSS community as the

organization that knows the details of FOSS policy — from project governance, to licensing to Codes of

Conduct — and gets those details

right.  We help our projects with everything from minor disagreements among

leadership to major licensing challenges that threaten the future of their

project.  While we can’t tell every one of these stories on our blog,

just ask anyone in our Project Leadership Committees and they’ll surely

tell you that Conservancy knows our stuff and handles any issues of this nature that occur.</p>

<p>Whenever possible, though, Conservancy does our policy work in public as key activists for software freedom. We <a href="/news/2020/jan/15/googlevoracle/">added our voice</a> to important legal cases like Google v. Oracle.  We provided context to interpret issues arising over the year, such as the launch of <a href="/blog/2020/jul/09/org-proliferation/">new organizational solutions for FOSS</a> and <a href="/blog/2020/oct/26/microsoft-github-riaa-youtube-dl/">DMCA aggression towards FOSS projects</a>.  We presented new ways to think about our critical problems, like legal mechanisms to achieve <a href="/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality/">copyleft equality</a> in the face of proprietary relicensing, ways to <a href="/blog/2019/dec/19/CPupdate/">support maintainers in employment contracts</a>, and extend protection of FOSS projects from <a href="/blog/2020/nov/13/widevine-dmca-takedown/">aggressive DMCA takedowns</a>.  We successfully filed for a <a href="/news/2020/jul/30/refile2020/">renewal of the Smart TV DMCA exemption</a> that we achieved in 2015.  We

went even further this year, and applied for <a href="/blog/2020/sep/16/dmca-exemptions-2020/">three more exemptions</a> that would protect the rights of those who use interconnected devices that have become critical fixtures in everyone&rsquo;s lives.</p>

<p>Most importantly, Conservancy remains the only charity actively fighting for the rights ensured by GPL on Linux. Our focus remains on IoT and embedded devices

that are now ubiquitous and used by everyone.  While we can only <a href="/blog/2019/oct/02/cambium-ubiquiti-gpl-violations/">occasionally discuss GPL enforcement matters publicly</a>, we launched this

year our <a href="/copyleft-compliance/enforcement-strategy.html">Strategic GPL Enforcement Plan</a>, and our companion <a href="/copyleft-compliance/firmware-liberation.html">Firmware Liberation Project</a>.  These two new initiatives have

just begun and they need your support and help to succeed.</p>

</div>

<h3 id="NewMembers">New Member Projects and New Board Member</h3>

<p>In 2020, Conservancy welcomed two important new projects.  The <a href="/news/2020/jul/21/ICRjoins/">Institute for Computing in Research</a> runs a mentoring program designed to bridge inequities in tech by training teenage students to do rigorous scientific research using free software. <a href="/news/2020/sep/10/openwrt-joins/">OpenWrt</a> is a critical FOSS wireless router project that demonstrates the long lasting positive  results of strategic GPL enforcement. We also recognize that communities change over time. In addition to adding new projects, we took the time this past year to sunset some of our projects that no longer had a charitable focus.</p>

<p>We were also pleased to welcome <a href="/news/2020/jan/03/arandal/">Allison Randal</a>, a steadfast advocate of software freedom, to our Board of Directors.</p>

</div>

<h3 id="Events">Events and Conferences</h3>

<p>FOSS events and conferences have always been an essential component of FOSS,

but this year, the pandemic thwarted our usual event system an infrastructure.

Conservancy has been at the center of transitioning events to online formats for

both our  member

projects and other third party  other FOSS conferences and event groups.  People around the world took huge losses in travel and event

cancellations, but we were adept.  We acted early and saved tens of thousands for

our member projects by negotiating with canceled venues.  We quickly adjusted

our travel policy to handle pandemic refund procedures, and we posted those changes publicly for other organizations to benefit.  When it’s safe and healthy for everyone to travel again, we plan to organize Copyleft Conf, SeConf, and the dozens of in-person hackfests.  Meanwhile, we have and will continue to

help our projects cancel or reschedule their events and, as we did for our member projects like Racket and Selenium, to operate as virtual events this year.</p>

<p>We were lucky that Copyleft Conf 2020 was timed before the

pandemic was upon us, and that event was an amazing success.  We reached out and welcomed non-FOSS licensors who seek to use

<a href="https://archive.org/details/copyleftconf2020-ehmke">copyleft for social justice</a> to begin dialogue.  To this day, it remains the