<div data-read-more="Summary of our year&hellip;">

<p>This past year we've all grown more conscious of our interconnected world.

   These events escalate the importance of free software tools that empower

   us all. Closed source and proprietary tools have overtaken many

   communication channels — particularly when we work from home. Even

   conferences and lecture series dedicated to “open source

   infrastructure” have been unable to escape the grasp of these closed

   systems. As we monitored these diffcult events, we prioritized support for

   those in our community that understand the crucial need

   for <a href="/blog/2021/feb/08/just-say-no-to-zoom/">conferences run

   solely with free software</a>.  We have been pleased to support free

   communication tools to assist with these efforts. <b>Our commitment to

   using, developing, and supporting free software tools and communities has

    never been stronger.</b></p>

<p>Over the past year, we took on new work that would have

  been <em>impossible</em> without your support. Last month, we filed

  a <a href="/vizio">lawsuit against long time license violator Vizio</a>.

  Through that lawsuit and many non-litigation ongoing license enforcement

  actions, Software Freedom Conservancy leads the field: We stand up for

  license compliance and holding corporation accountable when others

  won't. Our focus in software licensing defends consumer rights.  This novel and

  critical approach to license compliance culminates  years of effort by our amazing policy and legal experts. We

  believe software freedom, when properly and actively upheld, enables everyone to hold

  technology providers accountable to the people most 

  impacted by their actions.</p>

<p id="dmca-exemptions">This year, we filed more DMCA exemption requests than any organization in

  the country —

  and <a href="/news/2021/oct/28/2021-DMCA-final-exemptions-win/">we won on

  every single one</a>.  We clarified the right to jailbreak of routers (an

  essential activity of our <a href="https://openwrt.org">OpenWrt

  project</a>), won a new right to safely investigate devices for license

  compliance, and helped solidify privacy-related research.  Karen (our

  executive director) also participated with a coalition that achieved yet

  another exemption for medical devices!  Our lawyer, Pam Chestek, <a href="https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2021/hearing-transcripts/210407-Section-1201-Public-Hearing-Class-15-7a-7b.pdf#page=13">testified</a> at the DMCA

  hearings on these exemptions, and confronted industry lobbyists directly as

  they sought to use their extreme

  wealth and legal power to harm consumers. We stridently fight their overreach &mdash; one bit at a time.</p>

</div>

<h3 id="Highlights">Highlights from some of our projects</h3>

<div data-read-more="Read more about our projects&hellip;">

  <p>Software Freedom Conservancy helped our projects engage in critical work

  this year. Overall, we raised, administered and facilitated <strong>$1.7 million</strong>

  go <em>directly</em> to fund <acronym title="Free and Open Source Software">FOSS</acronym>

  contributors.  We do the arduous work to sustain these FOSS communities:</p>

<p>We helped <b>Outreachy</b> expand to its largest cohorts ever. Our last

round accepted 71 interns, and we announced this week that the current round

 will have 62! (That's 133 interns &mdash; an <strong>27% growth</strong> from the previous two

rounds!) We're grateful to be able support Outreachy to serve more

communities who are committed to helping to push back against systemic

underrepresentation in technology and software.</p>

<p><b>Godot</b> has continued to push the boundary of what anyone thought was

  possible with an open source game engine.  Godot's impressive team, funded

  through contracts with Software Freedom Conservancy, continues to building

  their community and their excellent codebase.  We are so proud of their beneficial

  <a href="https://godotengine.org/community">focus on community</a>.  Watch

  their fun, exciting,

  and <a href="https://godotengine.org/article/announcing-2021-godot-games-showreel">brand

  new showreel</a> to see what these cutting edge creators are making.</p>

<p>Software Freedom Conservancy also proudly supports, with direct funding of

  contributors, the <b>Reproducible Builds</b> team.  They ensure the

  security of computer systems of all shapes and sizes around the world.

  This necessary and vital project becomes even more essential in the age of

  direct attacks on technological

  infrastructure. The <a href="https://reproducible-builds.org/tools/">tools

  they've made</a> are freely available to help others increase

  reproducibility in their own projects.</p>

<p><b>OpenWrt</b> recently had their OpenWrt 21.02 release &mdash; which

  increases the default security options including optional SELinux

  and <acronym title="Address Space Layout Randomization">ASLR</acronym>. 

  OpenWrt empowers users to run a free

  operating system on their routers.  Combined with <a href="#dmca-exemptions">our DMCA exemption</a>,

  the landscape of free firmware is now much easier to explore and

  deploy.  Meanwhile, another of our projects, <b>coreboot</b>, has further grown the supported hardware

  list for freeing your bootloader. These two projects are at the core of

  our <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/firmware-liberation.html">firmware

  liberation initiative</a>. As our work continues,  more companies will learn

  what most router companies already know: consumers

  prefer hardware that can run copylefted software and — contrary to

  popular belief &mdash; will gladly pay <em>more</em>  for hardware that

  respects their rights and freedoms!</p>

<p><b>The Institute for Computing in Research</b> has furthered its mission.

  After two successful rounds of interns in Santa Fe, New Mexico,

  <acronym title="The Institute for Computing in Research">ICR</acronym>

  expanded its intern cohort to include a selection of six high school

  students in Portland, Oregon. These unique paid internships introduce high

<h3 id="NewStaff">New staff!</h3>

<div data-read-more="Click more for on our new staff&hellip;">

<p>At the end of last year, we

  hired <a href="/news/2020/dec/02/sharp-newest-employee/">Sage Sharp</a> as

  Senior Director of Diversity & Inclusion; they about to complete their

  first year with us. Meanwhile, finishing up his first six months

  is <a href="/blog/2021/may/18/pono-introduction/">Daniel

  Pono Takamori</a>, our Community Organizer &amp; Non-Profit Problem

  Solver.  These two are very welcome additions to our team of <em>just five</em>

  full-time employees, and <em>one</em> part-time employee. We are proud of the

  breadth of skills and dedication of our team.</p>

<p>As a testament to &ldquo;practice what you preach&rdquo;, we undertook

  what we consider a fair and equitable hiring process which our executive

  director

  Karen <a href="/blog/2021/oct/15/equitable-hiring/">described

  in detail on our website</a>. We

  lead by example &mdash; with transparency and casting a wide net to avoid just hiring within our circles.</p>

<p>We also updated our website &mdash; hopefully, you'll find it easier to

use and that it better conveys our mission and work.  Our chat platform moved

to <a href="/blog/2021/jun/21/chat-options/">XMPP</a>. Bridging to IRC and

Matrix is supported, so you are welcome to join with whatever client you like

(unlike other “Loose” options).  Throughout the seemingly-endless video

chatting during the pandemic, we have been one of only two FOSS organizations

who insist on using FOSS video chat platforms like Big Blue Button.  We are

committed to using free software for communication and demonstrating that

organizations of all sizes can make the same commitment.</p>

</div>

<h3 id="WritingAndSpeaking">Writing and Speaking</h3>

<div data-read-more="Find out about our writing and speaking engagements&hellip;">

<p>Software Freedom Conservancy team members published important writings

  this year to both share essential historical context and modern

  interpretations.  Denver Gingerich wrote about

  the <a href="/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/">installation requirement for

  the GPLv2</a>. Bradley M. Kuhn documented the historical record in his

  related piece

  about <a href="/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-the-gpl-right-to-install/">&ldquo;Tivoization&rdquo;

  and Your Right to Install Under Copyleft</a>. Bradley also explained

  how <cite><a href="/blog/2021/jun/30/who-should-own-foss-copyrights/">It

  Matters Who Owns Your Copylefted Copyrights</a></cite> &mdash; which

  garnered a lot of great community conversations. In another vein, Sage

  Sharp of Outreachy wrote a tremendous piece

  titled <cite><a href="/blog/2021/apr/20/how-to-apologize/">So you want to

  entire life cycle apologizing for your own behavior. We can all learn from

  this piece about how to act more humanely in our shared spaces of

  production.</p>

<p>This was another long year of online conferences. While the traveling was

 easier (by not doing it), we miss the face to face relationship building

  that we've come to expect from our big

  conference gatherings. We can't wait to get back to a sense of normalcy and

  at least have a little less latency between us.</p>

<p>Karen, our executive director, gave two keynotes this year, one at the <a href="/news/2021/mar/23/karen-lailec-2021/">Leuven AI Law &amp; Ethics Conference</a> and another at <a href="https://conf.linuxappsummit.org/event/3/contributions/71/">Linux App Summit</a>. Karen also spoke with Marina Zhurakhinskaya at <cite>All Things Open</cite> about the 10+ year history of Outreachy. Karen was also an invited speaker at <a href="https://heales.org/2021/05/28/conference-big-data-a-i-and-healthy-longevity-how-to-progress-faster-and-better-for-all-scientists-thursday-september-9-2021/">Big Data, A.I. and Healthy Longevity: How to progress faster and better for all scientists</a>.</p>

<p>Karen and Bradley were also co-organizers (with others) of the Legal &amp;

  Policy Devroom at FOSDEM, where they also moderated panels and spoke.

  Daniel Pono Takamori gave a talk

  about <cite><a href="http://pdxlinux.org/2021-07-01-FreeSoftware-LegacyOfCommunication.pdf">How

  Free Software Continues the Legacy of Open Communication</a></cite> to the

  Portland Linux/ Unix Group.</p>

<p>We were also a sponsor of the

fantastic <a href="https://seagl.org/">SeaGL</a> event. A community focused

conference that does an incredible job giving opportunities to first-time

speakers (suitable for community members of all walks of life). They hosted

their conference on the Matrix platform, which further proved it's possible

to run a virtual conference with free software.</p>

</div>

<h3 id="HelpUs">Help us Continue this Work</h3>

<p>We are beyond thankful for the ability to continue our work &mdash; which

  only continues due to <strong>your financial contributions</strong>. We

  recognize that not everyone has the same financial leeway to donate as they

  have in the past. But please consider giving what you can so that our

  organization can continue to advocate and support the rights of all

  software users. We work hard and efficiently, and accomplish so much with

  our small staff. We hope — through our hard work, creativity, and

  passionate dedication — that we've demonstrated over the years how

  Software Freedom Conservancy continues to be the beacon of change for

  software freedom that the world needs. <a href="/donate/">Please consider

  donating now!</a></p>

<div style="overflow: auto">

<div class="picture-small right">

  <img src="/img/scaled-LLW-2015-Conservancy-Supporters-by-Carlo-Piana-CC-0.jpg" alt="Zack, Karen, John and Jim pose, mostly wearing the vintage t-shirt!" />

  <p>Vintage-shirt-wearing Sustainers pose with Karen! <br/>From left: Stefano &ldquo;Zack&rdquo; Zacchiroli, Karen M. Sandler, John Sullivan, and Jim Wright</p>

</div>