these situations, many companies comply properly, but some companies

also try to bend or even break the GPL's rules to their perceived

advantage.</p>

<p>The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Software Freedom Conservancy

  (Conservancy) today lead worldwide efforts to ensure compliance with

  the GPL family of licenses. The FSF began copyleft enforcement

  in the 1980s, and Conservancy has enforced the GPL for many of

  its member projects since its founding nearly a decade ago. Last

  year, the FSF and Conservancy jointly

  published <a href="https://copyleft.org/guide/"><cite>Copyleft and

  the GNU General Public License: A Comprehensive Tutorial and

  &ldquo;<a href="https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidepa2.html#x17-116000II">A

  Practical Guide to GPL Compliance&rdquo;</a> and

  &ldquo;<a href="https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidepa3.html#x26-152000III">Case

  Studies in GPL Enforcement</a>&rdquo;, which explain the typical

  process that both the FSF and Conservancy follow in their GPL

  enforcement actions. (Shorter descriptions of these processes appear

  in blog posts written

  by <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/compliance-situations">the

  FSF</a>

  and <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2012/feb/01/gpl-enforcement/">Conservancy</a>.)</p>

<p>As stalwarts of the community's freedom, we act as a proxy for users when