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    <h4 class="toggle-control" data-text="Paper Check" 

    data-expanded-text="Paper Check:">Paper Check</h4>

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    Send paper check for $120 to:<br/>

    Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc.<br/>

    137 MONTAGUE ST  STE 380<br/>

    BROOKLYN, NY 11201-3548 &nbsp; USA<br/>

    Please write <q>SUPPORTER</q> and t-shirt size in memo line. 

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<p><a href="/donate">Even More Ways to Donate</a></p>

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  <h1><img class="appeal-header" alt="Become a Conservancy Supporter!" src="/img/conservancy-supporter-header.png"/></h1>

The world today is powered increasingly by Free Software. But what many

people don't realize is how much support is needed to keep all of these

projects free and open. The work that we do every day ensures the success and

the continued freedom of the projects that the developers of our member

projects dedicate themselves to. Projects like Git, Samba,

Wine, BusyBox, QEMU, Inkscape, Selenium, and dozens more

<p>We are asking for you

  to <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">join us and become a

    Conservancy Supporter</a> but this is more than our usual annual

  fundraising appeal.  As described in more detail below, after the events 

  of 2015, we must substantially increase our individual support to be able 

  to continue defending software freedom for our member projects and the 

  entire free and open source software community.  We need at least [750] 

  of you to become annual Supporters just to continue our basic community services.

  We need [2500] of you to become annual Supporters now to continue

  our work enforcing copyleft licenses.  If you don't become a Supporter now,

  we will be forced to radically restructure and wind down a substantial portion

  of our operations.</p>

<h4>2015 successes</h4>

Software Freedom Conservancy has had a lot of major successes this year:

<ul>

<li>We brought four new projects under the protection of the

Conservancy: <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/jul/23/qemu-joins/">QEMU</a>,

  the generic machine emulator and

virtualizer, <a href="https://www.bro.org/">The Bro Network Security

Monitor</a>, the <a href="http://www.godotengine.org/">Godot Game Engine</a>,

and <a href="http://outreachy.org">Outreachy</a>, a program dedicated to

helping people from underrepresented groups get involved in free and open

source software. We also worked with the Debian community to launch

the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/aug/17/debian/">Debian

Copyright Aggregation Project</a> at their request.</li>

<li>We <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">supported

the lawsuit</a> Christoph Hellwig has brought against VMware in Germany, the

first case on derivative works and the GPL.</li>

<li>We fought for

and <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/oct/27/DMCA-win/">successfully

earned an exemption from the Library of Congress in the DMCA review

process</a> to legally permit circumvention of encryption on Smart TVs,

ensuring that you are free to hack on the devices that you legally own. </li>

<li>We collaborated with the <a href="https://fsf.org/">Free Software

freedom. We work tirelessly and don't shy away from difficult issues.</p>

<p>We're a unique organization &mdash; a staunch defender of copyleft (for Linux,

Debian and many of our member projects), a source of education and champions

of diversity for the community via Outreachy and other programs, and are the

legal home to over 30 member projects that are essential to developing free

software.</p>

<p>We undertake these critical programs because they are essential to the

future of technology. We do them because they are right. <b>But we cannot do

them without you</b>. If we do not meet our fundraising goals, we will be

forced to radically restructure.</p>

<p>Our fiscal sponsorship model is not financially self-sustaining by itself:  we cannot

afford even one staff member and basic overhead with the revenue we take in

from our projects. In order to effectively continue to serve our member

projects, we need [750] Supporters. If you use or care about

our <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member projects</a>,

which include some of the most widely used free software, you can help them

all by <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">signing up as a

Supporter today</a>.</p>

<h4>Fighting for the GPL</h4>

<p>Many consider our GPL compliance and enforcement controversial.   We don't

think it is:  we stand up for

the GPL at the request of the Linux kernel community, the Debian community, 

and our member projects. Most recently, that has resulted in our funding

of the <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">suit

against VMware</a>, which is the first lawsuit on derivative works and the

GPL. While this work is extremely important to the continued long-term

success of software freedom and copyleft not to mention in the long term 

interest of the industry as a whole, it makes fundraising from companies

very difficult.  Some companies 

have withdrawn from funding us and some have even successfully pressured 

conferences to cancel or prevent talks on our enforcement work. We do

this work because we think that it is good for everyone in the long run,

because we know it is the right thing to do, and because we know that we are

in the best position to do it. But that's not enough — you have to think it's

right too and <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">show us by

becoming a Supporter now</a>.</p>

<h4>It's up to you</h4>

<p>We have raised enough money to continue the VMware case, but our overall

enforcement work needs additional support to be able to continue.  As we

state in

the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">Principles