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<h1>Officers</h1>

<p>The <a href="/about/board/">Board of Directors</a> of the Conservancy

elects its officers.  The current officers are:</p>

<h2>Bradley M. Kuhn - President</h2>

<p><a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley M. Kuhn</a> is the President and

href="http://fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation (FSF)</a>. Kuhn began his

work in the software freedom movement as a volunteer in 1992, when he became

an early adopter of the GNU/Linux operating system, and began contributing to

various FLOSS projects.  He worked during the 1990s as a system administrator

and software developer for various companies, and taught AP Computer Science

at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati.  Kuhn's non-profit career began in

2000, when he was hired by the FSF.  As FSF's Executive Director from

2001–2005, Kuhn led FSF's GPL enforcement, launched its Associate

Member program, and invented the <a

href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html">Affero GPL</a>.  From

2005-2010, Kuhn worked as the Policy Analyst and Technology Director of the

Software Freedom Law Center.  Kuhn was the primary volunteer for Conservancy

SFLC, Karen worked as an associate in the corporate departments of Gibson,

Dunn & Crutcher LLP in New York and Clifford Chance in New York and

London. Karen received her law degree from Columbia Law School in 2000, where

she was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and

Technology Law Review. Karen received her bachelor’s degree in engineering

from The Cooper Union. She is a recipient of an O'Reilly Open Source Award

and also co-host of the <a href="http://faif.us">&ldquo;Free as in

Freedom&rdquo; podcast</a>.</p>

<h2>Bradley M. Kuhn - President and Distinguished Technologist</h2>

<a id="bkuhn"></a>

<p><a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley M. Kuhn</a> is the President and

href="http://fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation (FSF)</a>. Kuhn began his

work in the software freedom movement as a volunteer in 1992, when he became

an early adopter of the GNU/Linux operating system, and began contributing to

various FLOSS projects.  He worked during the 1990s as a system administrator

and software developer for various companies, and taught AP Computer Science

at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati.  Kuhn's non-profit career began in

2000, when he was hired by the FSF.  As FSF's Executive Director from

2001–2005, Kuhn led FSF's GPL enforcement, launched its Associate

Member program, and invented the <a

href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html">Affero GPL</a>.  From

2005-2010, Kuhn worked as the Policy Analyst and Technology Director of the

Software Freedom Law Center.  Kuhn was the primary volunteer for Conservancy

  which <a href="/news/2014/nov/07/copyleft-org/">formally

  launched in fall 2014</a>.  The Guide includes tutorial materials about

  copyleft and compliance with copyleft licenses,

  including <a href="https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidepa2.html"><cite>A

  Practical Guide to GPL Compliance</cite></a>.  The materials

  on <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft.org</a> have been developed and

  improved since 2002, and are themselves copylefted, and developed

  collaboratively in public.</p>

<p>However, the Guide is admittedly a large document, so for those who are

  interested in a short summary of describing how Conservancy handles GPL

  enforcement and compliance

  blog post outlining the compliance process</a> is likely the best source.</p>

<h2>Reporting GPL Violations To Us</h2>

<p>If you are aware of a license violation or compliance issue regarding

  Debian, Linux, or

  project</a> (&mdash; in particular BusyBox, Evergreen, Inkscape, Mercurial,

  Samba, Sugar Labs, or Wine),

  please <a href="mailto:compliance@sfconservancy.org">contact us by email at

    &lt;compliance@sfconservancy.org&gt;</a>.</p>

<p>If you think you've found a GPL violation, we encourage you to

   read <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/11/08/gpl-enforcement.html">this

   personal blog post by our Distinguished Technologist, Bradley M. Kuhn</a>,

   about good practices in discovering and reporting GPL violations.  (We'd

   also like someone to convert the text of that blog post into a patch for

   <a href="http://compliance.guide">The Compliance Guide on

   copyleft.org</a>; submit it

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<h1 id="contribution-and-similarity-analysis-of-christoph-hellwigs-linux-code-as-found-in-vmware-esxi-5.5">Contribution and Similarity Analysis of Christoph Hellwig's Linux Code as found in VMware ESXi 5.5</h1>

<p>This analysis verifies by reproducible analysis a set of specific contributions that are clearly made by Christoph Hellwig to Linux, and shows how those contributions appear in the VMware ESXi 5.5 product.</p>

<h1 id="understanding-code-similarity-and-cloning">Understanding Code Similarity and &quot;Cloning&quot;</h1>

<p>Software is often modified in various ways; indeed, Linux developers form a community that encourages and enables modification by many parties. Given this development model, communities often find it valuable to determine when software source code moves from one place to another with only minor modifications. Various scientifically-vetted techniques can be used to identify &quot;clones&quot; -- a portion of code that is substantially similar to pre-existing source code. The specific area of academic research is called &quot;code cloning detection&quot; or &quot;code duplication detection&quot;. The area has been under active research since the mid-1990s <a href="#fn1" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref1"><sup>1</sup></a>. In 2002, Japanese researchers published a tool called CCFinder <a href="#fn2" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref2"><sup>2</sup></a>, which, in its updated incarnation (called CCFinderX), is widely used and referenced by academic researchers in the field <a href="#fn3" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref3"><sup>3</sup></a> and has specifically been used to explore reuses of code in GPL'd software such as Linux <a href="#fn4" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref4"><sup>4</sup></a>.</p>

<p>CCFinderX uses a token-based clone detection method and a suffix-tree matching algorithm; both techniques have been highly vetted and considered in the academic literature. The techniques are considered viable and useful in detecting clones. Many academic papers on the subject have been peer-reviewed and published, and nearly every newly published paper compares its new techniques of clone detection to the seminal results found by CCFinderX. For purposes of our analysis, we have therefore chosen to use CCFinderX. These results can be easily reproduced since CCFinderX is, itself, also Open Source software.</p>

<h1 id="establishing-a-baseline-of-the-ccfinderx-tool">Establishing A Baseline of the CCFinderX Tool</h1>

<p>CCFinderX offers many statistics for clone detection. After expert analysis, we concluded that most relevant to this situation is the &quot;ratio of similarity&quot; between the existing code and the new code. To establish a baseline, we considered two different comparisons of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). First, we compared the Linux kernel, Version 4.5.2, to the FreeBSD kernel, Version 10.3.0. This comparison was inspired by the similar 2002 study <a href="#fn5" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref5"><sup>5</sup></a> of these two large C programs. The hypothesis remained that CCFinderX would encounter a low but significant percentage of code similarity, since the FreeBSD and Linux projects collaborate on some subprojects and willingly share code under the 3-Clause BSD license for those parts. (These collaborations are public and well-documented.)</p>

<p>The experiment confirmed the hypothesis. We found that a 3.68% &quot;ratio of similarity&quot; when comparing code from Linux to the FreeBSD kernel.</p>

<p>Next, we compared the source code of the Linux Kernel 4.5.2 to the LLVM+Clang system, version 3.8.0. These two projects are each a large program that are not known to actively share code. There may be some very minimal similarity simply due to chance, but something much lower than the 3.68% found between Linux and FreeBSD's kernel.</p>

<p>Indeed, when the same test is run to compare Linux to the LLVM+Clang system, the &quot;ratio of similarity&quot; was 0.075%.</p>

<h1 id="general-comparison-of-linux-kernel-to-vmware-sources">General Comparison of Linux Kernel to VMware sources</h1>

<p>With the baseline established, we now begin relevant comparisons. First, we compare the Linux kernel version 2.6.34 to the sources <a href="https://k.sfconservancy.org/vmkdrivers">released by VMware in their (partial) source release</a>. The &quot;ratio of similarity&quot; between Linux 2.6.34 and VMware's partial source release is 20.72%. There is little question that much of VMware's kernel has come from Linux.</p>

<h1 id="methodology-of-showing-hellwigs-contributions-in-vmware-esxi-5.5-sources">Methodology Of Showing Hellwig's Contributions in VMware ESXi 5.5 Sources</h1>

<p>The following describes a methodology to show Hellwig's contributions to Linux, and how they compare to code found in VMware ESXi 5.5.</p>

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<h2>The time has come to stand up for the GPL.</h2>

<p><em>In March 2015, Conservancy <a href="/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">announced Christoph Hellwig's

    lawsuit against VMware in Germany</a>.  In July 2016,

    we <a href="/news/2016/aug/09/vmware-appeal/">announced that Christoph

    would appeal the lower court's ruling</a>.</p>

    Support Conservancy's and Christoph's efforts in this area

    supporter</a> or <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">donating via

    the link on the right</a>.</em></p>

<p>We were told to ask nicely and repeatedly, so we did.</p>

<p>We asked allies to help us make contact in friendly and professional

  ways.</p>

<p>Everyone asked us to give companies as many chances as possible and as

  much help as possible to comply with copyleft, so we did.</p>

  for-profit income, and the reporting requirements vary wildly from their

  for-profit equivalents.</p>

<p>Conservancy's existing system is working adequately, but requires daily

  the relatively more expensive time of a highly technical person to do the

  job of bookkeeping.  Also, the system cannot easily be adapted in its

  current form for another NPO, unless they also have a

  skilled technical employee to act as bookkeeper.  This project aims to build

  on what Conservancy has learned and produce a non-profit accounting system

  that corrects these flaws.</p>

<p>Finally, Conservancy's mission (as stated

1023 with the USA IRS</a>) includes producing Open Source and Free Software.

Thus, this project is a great way to pursue Conservancy's mission and address a

specific need that so many NPOs (including us) have.  If no one steps up to create Free Software to replace the widely used

proprietary software, NPOs in aggregate will pay <em>much more</em> money for

proprietary licensing than Conservancy will ever spend in developing a

replacement. Please <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">donate

generously</a> to help us do it!</p>

<a id="quotes"></a>

<h3>Statements of Support For This Project from Others</h3>

<p><q>As a national fiscal sponsor with over 3,000 arts and cultural projects

<p>In addition to supporting our projects,

<ul>

<li>we share our expertise across communities. We speak at many

conferences, and publish materials to increase understanding about the

organizational, community and legal issues around free and open source

software. We advocate for free and open source software and provide

education around that mission.  We form partnerships across our

communities to work more effectively.  Check out <a 

href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft.org</a>

or sign up to join the <a 

tax exempt working group</a>.</li>

<li>we seek to solve problems for the public through free and open 

source

software.  We've launched a <a href="https://npoacct.sfconservancy.org/">

nonprofits accounting project</a> to help all

nonprofits (in free software and in other fields) avoid paying millions

of dollars in licensing fees for subpar accounting software.</li>

<li>as part of Conservancy's partnership in the program, we support Karen as

  a co-organizer of the Free and Open Source Software Outreach Program.</li>