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<p>As existing donors and supporters know, the Software Freedom Conservancy

  is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity registered in New York, and Conservancy

  helps people take control of their computing by growing the software

  freedom movement, supporting community-driven alternatives to proprietary

  software, and defending free software with practical initiatives.

  Conservancy accomplishes these goals with various initiatives, including

  defending and upholding the rights of software users and consumers under

  copyleft licenses, such as the GPL.</p>

<h2 id="brief-history-of-user-focused-gpl-enforcement">Brief History of

  User-Focused GPL Enforcement</h2>

<p>The spring of 2003 was a watershed moment for software freedom on

  electronic devices. 802.11 wireless technology had finally reached the

  mainstream, and wireless routers for home use had flooded the market

  earlier in the year. By June

  2003, <a href="https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/03/06/08/1749217/is-linksys-violating-the-GPL">the

  general public knew that Linksys (a division of Cisco) was violating the

  GPL</a> on their WRT54G model wireless routers. Hobbyists discovered

  (rather easily) that Linux and BusyBox were included in the router, but

  Linksys and Cisco had failed to provide source code or any offer for source

  code to its customers.</p>