<a href="/img/conservancy-staff-photo.jpg"><img class="appeal-right" src="/img/conservancy-staff-photo.jpg"/></a>

<p>

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

<ul>

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

Conservancy: <a href="/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="/news/2015/aug/17/debian/">Debian

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

<li>We <a href="/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="/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

Foundation</a> to publish

the <a href="/copyleft-compliance/principles.html">Principles

of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement</a>, establishing community norms for

enforcing the GPL in the public's interest, which have 

already been <a href="/copyleft-compliance/principles.kr.html">translated

into Korean</a>.</li>

<li>Along with FSF, we

helped <a href="/news/2015/jul/15/ubuntu-ip-policy/">Canonical,

Ltd. achieve compliance in its "Intellectual Property" Policy</a>, while

pointing out that the policy fails to address important software freedom

issues.</li>

<li>We conducted friendly discussions with companies out of compliance with

the GPL, seeking non-litigious resolutions.</li>

<li>We participated in the process

of <a href="/news/2015/oct/14/FCC-comment/">telling

the FCC to fix its proposed rules</a> restricting third-party modification of

firmware in wireless devices.

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  software, which included various different internships and contract

  software development work.</li>

  around the globe advocating for their free and open source software

  projects at conferences and other venues.</li>

<li>We gave keynotes

at <a href="/blog/2015/aug/17/debian/">DebConf</a>, <a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/identity_crisis/">FOSDEM</a>, <a href="/blog/2015/jul/14/FISL16/">FISL</>, <a href="/news/2015/mar/31/libreplanet/">LibrePlanet</a>, <a href="/blog/2015/sep/30/linaro-keynote/">Linaro

Connect</a>, and participated in many more conferences all over the world; we also 

shared our expertise in initiatives

like <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft.org</a>. We participated in

interviews and <a href="/blog/">blogposts</a>, and

Bradley and Karen published episodes of <a href="http://faif.us/">Free as in

Freedom</a>, dedicated to discussing the important issues in software

freedom.</li>

</ul>

<p>And we did <strong>all of this</strong> with <strong>only three full time employees</strong>.</p>

<p>We are focused on the most important ethical issues in 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. <strong>But we cannot do

them without you</strong>. 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="/members/current/">member projects</a>,

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

all by <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">signing up as a

Supporter today</a>.</p>

<h4>Fighting for the GPL</h4>

<a href="/img/gpl-heart.png"><img class="appeal-right"  src="/img/gpl-heart.png"/></a>

<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="/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">suit