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

  school students to software freedom as part of a summer research position

  that focuses on introducing young scholars to computing in areas of

  physical science, life science, social science, arts, and

  humanities. Supported by academics at Portland State University, Reed

  College, and Oregon State University, the cohort in Portland has projects

  in computational biology, natural language processing, pure math, and AI

  and game theory. </p>

</div>

<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

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 give further historical context and modern interpretation. Denver Gingerich wrote about the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/">installation requirement for the GPLv2</a>. Bradley Kuhn documented the historical record in his related piece about <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-the-gpl-right-to-install/">“Tivoization” and Your Right to Install Under Copyleft</a>. And he writes about <a href=" https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jun/30/who-should-own-foss-copyrights/">It Matters Who Owns Your Copylefted Copyrights</a>, which garnered a lot of great community conversations. In another vein, Sage Sharp of Outreachy wrote a tremendous piece titled <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/apr/20/how-to-apologize/">So you want to apologize… Now what?</a>, which has helped explain the 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="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2021/mar/23/karen-lailec-2021/">Leuven AI Law & 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 All Things Open about the 10+ year history of Outreachy. She 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 & Policy Devroom at FOSDEM, where they also moderated panels and spoke. Sage Sharp spoke at the <a href="https://chanzuckerberg.com/eoss/">Chan Zuckerberg Essential Open Source</a> event. Daniel Pono Takamori gave a talk about <a href="http://pdxlinux.org/2021-07-01-FreeSoftware-LegacyOfCommunication.pdf">"How Free Software Continues the Legacy of Open Communication"</a> 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 ability to continue our work due to your financial contributions. 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 will continue to work as hard as we can with our small staff. And we hope that through our hard work, creativity and passionate dedication, 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="https://sfconservancy.org/donate/">Please consider donating here.</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>

<div data-read-more="A note on t-shirts&hellip;">

<p>We know you are sick of hearing about supply chains, global shortages, and deliveries being delayed. But we must be up front that since we have a small staff we try to batch our t-shirt orders, and given the realities of the pandemic we are somewhat behind on our t-shirt deliveries. We're working on a new t-shirt design for this year and will send everybody their shirts after the end of this fundraiser. We so appreciate everyone's patience! </p>

</div>

<h3 id="VintageT">Vintage T-Shirt Promotion</h3>

<div data-read-more="Would you like a last chance to receive a vintage Conservancy t-shirt?  Find out how&hellip;">

<p>If you're a Sustainer, you've already received or will soon receive a

  t-shirt in our 2018 design shown here.   But,

would you like to take advantage of a last chance to get our vintage design — seen sported so often

by <a href="https://twitter.com/bensturmfels/status/599118574641262592">our earliest Sustainers</a> at <a href="https://twitter.com/conservancy/status/786480068512002048">conferences and events</a>?  If so, read on!</p>

<div class="picture-tiny left">

<img src="/img/brett-in-2018-shirt.jpg" alt="Brett wears the 2018 t-shirt!" />

<p><a href="/about/staff/#brett">Brett Smith</a> wears the current t-shirt design.</p>

</div>

<p><strong>UPDATE: Just give $256 total for this year's fundraiser and

    receive an additional vintage T-shirt!</strong></p>