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<h3 id="YearInReview">Our Year in Review</h3>

<div data-read-more="Summary of our year&hellip;">

<p>We are proud to tell you about the important work we've accomplished over

the past 12 months. Software Freedom Conservancy continues to set the bar for

promoting ethical technology and advocacy for software freedom. Whether it's

continuing the tireless and incredibly important work of <a

<p>This has been a big year for Software Freedom Conservancy in our tireless

efforts to promote ethical technology, increase diversity and inclusion in

FOSS, continuing to fight for your rights with <a

href="https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/">copyleft compliance</a>,

growing and working with our many <a

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

leading the way in promoting diversity and inclusion efforts with <a

href="https://www.Outreachy.org/">Outreachy</a> and <a

href="https://computinginresearch.org/">The Institute for Computing in

Research</a>. This year was no different in showing our dedication to software

freedom and critiques of those who oppose it.</p>

<p>We are entering the second year of our <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html">lawsuit against Vizio</a>.

While there's a long way to go in this groundbreaking suit, we've already

attained an initial <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/may/16/vizio-remand-win/">historic victory</a>

in succeeding to remand the case back from federal to state court.

We've been grateful to see so much support from our Sustainers and communities

around the promise our case holds for consumer rights. With the rise of the <a

and support our incredible <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member projects</a>.

Our staff engaged in many invited speaking opportunities, we grew our staff,

and we continue to build community around important issues like the software

Right to Repair movement. We hosted our first large conference, <a href="https://fossy.us">FOSSY</a>,

and while we finalize details for next year, we hope to see you there to join

us in community!</p>

<p>We are entering the third year of our <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html">lawsuit against Vizio</a>.

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to ensure that all recipients

of GPL'd software maintain rights as <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/glossary.html#third-party-beneficiary">third-parth beneficiaries</a>,

but after a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/oct/12/transcript-msj-hearing/">recent argument in the case</a>,

but we are still moving in the right direction. With the rise of the <a

href="https://www.repair.org/">Right to Repair</a> movement, we've seen a

growing desire from "everyday consumers" to have the ability to repair the

software on their phones and other internet connected devices. Our projects

...

@@ -113,8 +110,8 @@ freedom to choose what software runs (and can be repaired) on their own

devices. (And speaking of our projects, there's a highlight of what some of

projects did this year below!) We also pursued many other violations (that our

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

don't permit us to disclose at the moment) and launched a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/may/02/conservancy-launches-copyright-assignment-system/">self-service

copyright assignment form</a> so that FOSS contributors can, without overly

don't permit us to disclose at the moment) and our <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/may/02/conservancy-launches-copyright-assignment-system/">self-service

copyright assignment form</a> enables FOSS contributors to, without overly

burdensome paperwork, entrust their copyrights to a nonprofit dedicated to

software freedom and rights of users all over the world.</p>

...

@@ -124,37 +121,21 @@ In that vein <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/may/12/introduction/">

(narrated by our Executive Director Karen Sandler) that introduces

the ideas of software freedom, and specifically what Software Freedom

Conservancy does. We also did a lot of public writings about some of the

important issues this year. From <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/mar/30/neo4j-v-purethink-open-source-affero-gpl/">interesting legal developments</a>

to <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/feb/01/biden-foss-security-sbom-copyleft-right-to-repair/">political outreach</a>

as well as <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/jul/18/foss-for-sale-in-ms-app-store/">leading a conversation</a>

standing up for developers and distributors of free software.</p>

important issues this year. From <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/feb/09/kuhn-neo4j-purethink-expert-report/">our perspective on the Neo4j suit</a>

to <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/aug/15/exit-zoom/">highlighting problematic behavior from proprietary software companies</a>, you can find out more about our speaking engagements

below.</p>

<div style="overflow: auto">

<div class="picture-small right">

  <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/videos/sfc-introduction_1080p.mp4"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/videos/sfc-introduction-video_poster.jpg" alt="Thumbnail of video showing a tree and Software Freedom" /></a>

</div>

<p>We also started a campaign to <b><a href="https://giveupgithub.org">Give Up

GitHub</a></b>. With more and more corporate interest and investment into FOSS,

we see a trend of community resources being bought up and controlled by

singular corporate entities. Having lived through multiple acquisitions and

extinctions of gratis code forges before, GitHub is just the most recent holder

of the title. Contrary to it's namesake project, <a href="https://git-scm.com/">git</a>

GitHub remains a proprietary, centralized

and hierarchical method of working on software. Stripping the underlying power

and versatility that has allowed it to become the canonical tool for

distributed software development. A single corporation controlling this piece

of critical infrastructure is clearly a harmful idea, a corporation will always

serve it's shareholders and not the community that it depends on growing and

keeping within it's walled garden. Please check out our <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/jun/30/give-up-github-launch/">blog post</a>

about the issue to find alternatives and other ways you can help this

divestment effort.</p>

</div>

<h3 id="Highlights">Highlights from some of our projects</h3>

<div data-read-more="Read more about our projects&hellip;">

  <p>For the second year in a row, we've raised, administered and/or

  <p>For the third year in a row, we've raised, administered and/or

     facilitated $1.7 million to improve software freedom directly! This

     includes contractors, interns and students, administrators, and grants

     for creation, distribution and maintenance of free software projects.

...

@@ -165,68 +146,67 @@ divestment effort.</p>

the May 2022 cohort with over 30 Free and Open Source software communities.

Bringing in new communities in the Open Science and Humanitarian spheres,

Outreachy continues to lead the way in providing opportunities to historically

excluded and under represented people in technology. With over 900 interns

accepted to the program to date, Outreachy continues to grow and expand it's

community. Outreachy also hired a new community manager, Omotola Omotayo.

Having recently <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/nov/16/omotola-sca-award/">won an

award at the She Code Africa Summit</a>, her work building up and promoting the

Outreachy community has been immensely successful.  Outreachy increased the

stipend it pays its interns this year, improved its documentation and held many

more opportunities for interns and applicants to learn about Outreachy, FOSS

and how to successfully engage in the tech industry.</p>

<p>A few of our projects put on or are planning to put on conferences. <b>Git</b>

Merge was held in Chicago in September. It provided a great face to face space

for the international group of developers to come together, decide on some

technical directions and have other conversations that are greatly sped up by

in person meeting. <b>Wine</b>Conf was held simultaneously with the X.Org developer's

conference and FOSS XR in Minneapolis the first week of October. The twelfth <a

href="https://con.racket-lang.org/">RacketCon</a> was run at the end of

October. <a href="https://reproducible-builds.org/">Reproducible Builds</a> had their summit in the beginning of November in

Venice. We're also working with the <b>Selenium</b> project on their <a href="https://seleniumconf.com/">upcoming conference</a>

March 28-30 2023.</p>

<p><b>OpenWrt</b> just released <a href="https://openwrt.org/releases/22.03/notes-22.03.2">version 22.03.02</a>

which added some more hardware support and fixed security bugs. This 22.03

release had some major changes like moving from iptables to nftables, adding

over 180 new devices to support over 1580 total devices! Some great quality of

life enhancements like dark mode in LuCL (Pono, who's the primary author of

this text, was really happy about this one) and they've solved Year 2038

problem which if you remember Y2K, is a sigh of relief to not scramble to

patch.</p>

excluded and under represented people in technology. Celebrating their 1000th

intern (!!!), there were celebrations all over the world and the participants

from all 17 years of it's history came out to be in community with each other.

</p>

<p><b>OpenWrt</b> released <a href="https://openwrt.org/releases/23.05/notes-23.05.0">version 23.05.0</a>

which continued adding hardware support for myriad devices, now supporting over

1790 devices, over 200 of which were added since last year! There is also now

support for various Rust packages, and major improvements to the core

components. OpenWrt remains one of the most important alternative firmware

projects, ensuring user rights in the ability to install (free) software on

your own devices.</p>

<p><a href="https://computinginresearch.org/">The Institute for Computing in

Research</a> completed it's first round in Austin, Texas. Now providing

training, education and real world software experience to high school students

in 3 cities and exploring additional cities that may join next summer. These

research internships are a great way for high school students to get involved

in real academic research while also being exposed to the ideas and principles

of software freedom.</p>

<p>And in a happy close of a member project relationship, <a href="https://godotengine.org/">Godot</a>

has <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/nov/01/godot-graduates/">graduated from Conservancy</a>

to <a href="https://godotengine.org/article/godots-graduation-godot-moves-to-a-new-foundation">start its own foundation</a>.

Our relationship with Godot was built on a shared

passion for community building in the free software space and we expect this

will continue as they grow into their own. Modeling their governance on the

system that we built together here are Conservancy, we are extremely proud of

what they have become and expect great things to come out of their new

organization and look forward to continue our relationship in an advisory

capacity.</p>

Research</a> completed it's fifth year, supporting 32 students in 3 cities this

summer. Now providing training, education and real world software experience to

high school students in 3 cities and exploring additional cities that may join

next summer. These research internships are a great way for high school

students to get involved in real academic research while also being exposed to

the ideas and principles of software freedom.</p>

<p><a href="https://inkscape.org">Inkscape</a> just celebrated their 20th

anniversary! Coinciding with their new <a href="https://inkscape.org/news/2023/11/18/big-small-release-inkscape-131-is-out/">1.3.1 release</a>, Inkscape is as active as ever and proving itself one

of the most vital free software projects, full of longevity and an ever

growing community. This year has been a big year of development, marking some

very exciting developments for the project. Creation of a new <a href="https://inkscape.org/*membership/blog/october-bug-accelerator-2023/">bug accelerator program</a>, a migration to <a href="https://inkscape.org/*membership/blog/august-gtk4-migration-tavmjong/">GTK4</a>, another year of <a href="https://inkscape.org/*membership/blog/customizable-canvas-controls/">GSOC participation</a> and new support for <a href="https://inkscape.org/*membership/blog/may-ai-extension-2023/">Adobe Illustrator import</a>!</p>

<p>Our member projects had a range of in person and online events this year.

<b>Inkscape</b> hosted an in-person meeting in Bensberg, Germany. A great meeting

for the PLC and contributors to get together to plan and work on technical

challenges. The first back in-person <b>Selenium</b> <a

href="https://seleniumconf.com/">conference</a> was in Chicago this past

may</a>. Attendence from over 10 countries, it was an incredible reunion for

the project contributors and users to get together. The <b>Git</b>

contributor summit was held online this year in September. Topics ranged from

ideas of new library support to how to better support for scaling with large

code forges and what the new contributor experience is like. A great mix of

code related and process related talks. The <a href="https://reproducible-builds.org/">Reproducible Builds</a>

annual summit was hosted in Hamburg featuring incredible

technical talks, project planning and continues to build the momentum and

reach for reproducibility. </p>

</div>

<h3 id="NewStaff">New staff!</h3>

<div data-read-more="Click more for on our new staff&hellip;">

<p>SFC hired an additional employee this year! <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/about/staff/#tracy">Tracy Homer</a>

is our new Operations Manager. Outside of Tracy's' work with SFC, she is

studying GIS at the University of Tennessee and is a board member of her local

hackerspace. We're so excited to have someone to with her set of skills help us

build out our organization. Helping out with everything from international

banking and tax questions, to conference planning, Tracy's been an incredible

addition to our team. She rounds out our team to 7 people (largest we've ever

been!).</p>

<p>SFC hired two additional employees this year! General Counsel Rick Sanders

joins the team to help with our continued legal needs. Rick has over 20 years'

experience as a intellectual-property litigator. His expertise has been

critical in helping our license compliance efforts and helping our organization

take on the increasing needs from projects and new initiatives. SFC's new

systems administrator is Paul Visscher. With over 20 years experience with

Linux and free software, Paul's belief in the power of free software to help

people engage with technology in non-exploitative ways fits in perfectly to

support our growing organizational needs and mission. Helping make sure we

can provide solid FOSS replacements to proprietary technologies for all of us.</p>

</div>

...

@@ -234,44 +214,36 @@ been!).</p>

<div data-read-more="Find out about our writing and speaking engagements&hellip;">

<p>Our staff has been presenting and speaking about software freedom all year.

Our Executive Director Karen Sandler gave a remote keynote address at the 2022

Public Domain & Open Source SW License Conference in Seoul, Korea. We also

<a href="https://av.sfconservancy.org/vizio-update-from-karen.mp4">published a talk</a>

Karen gave to update folks on the Vizio law suit. Karen was also at

All Things Open for the <a href="https://2022.allthingsopen.org/sessions/open-source-law-policy-and-practice-book-panel/">Open Source Law Policy and Practice Book Panel</a>.

She was joined other experts who

contributed to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/44727">the book</a> and

they had a conversation about current state and best practice for legal policy

around free and open source software in addition to conducting a book signing

(You can check out another book that Karen contributed a chapter to along with

Marie Moe, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Modified-Living-Chris-Hables-Gray/dp/0815364016">"Modified: Living as a Cyborg"</a>,

which became more widely available this year.)</p>

<div style="overflow: auto">

<div class="picture-small left">

  <img src="/img/scalex19-booth.jpg" alt="Booth with banners and merch at SCaLEx19" />

  <p>Pono took a photo of the SFC booth at SCaLEx19</p>

</div></div>

<p>Pono gave a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrJX1XYICmc">keynote at

Git Merge</a> this October. Speaking on how the Git project is a canonical

model for free software development and the ways it teaches by leading the way.

He also boothed at <a href="https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/19x">SCaLE

19x</a>, which was great to have the community centered conference back in

action.</p>

<p>Sage spoke at the September 2022 Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative EOSS, sharing

advice on how Outreachy has improved its own inclusive processes, and the group

discussed potential solutions for unresolved DEI issues in open science

communities. Karen and Bradley co-organized the FOSDEM Legal & Policy DevRoom,

which was held remotely. In addition to helping to organize the room, they also

participated in a panel with the other organizers about the most critical

topics facing FOSS today. SFC staffers also participate in key meetings to

represent community interests in a variety of FOSS related discussions

concerning security, governmental use of FOSS and in critical infrastructure

discussions and also presented in classroom to educate students about software

freedom.</p>

Our Executive Director Karen Sandler received an honorary doctorate from

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven for her incredible work in FOSS leadership, and

her advocacy and pursuit of software freedom and rights for all.

In November she spoke at <a href="https://www.sfscon.it/talks/the-history-of-and-path-forward-for-copyleft-and-the-gpl/">SFSCON about "The History of, and Path forward for, Copyleft and the GPL"</a>.</p>

<video class="small-right" controls="" poster="/videos/2023-02-02_Sandler-Karen_KU-Leuven_Honorary-Doctorate_still.png" id="doctorate_vid">

  <source src="/videos/2023-02-02_Sandler-Karen_KU-Leuven_Honorary-Doctorate.mp4">

  <track src="/docs/2023-02-02_Sandler-Karen_KU-Leuven_Honorary-Doctorate.en.txt" kind="subtitles" srclang="en" label="English" />

  <track src="/docs/2023-02-02_Sandler-Karen_KU-Leuven_Honorary-Doctorate.nl.txt" kind="subtitles" srclang="nl" label="Dutch (NL)" />

  <a href="/videos/2023-02-02_Sandler-Karen_KU-Leuven_Honorary-Doctorate.mp4">Download the talk video</a>

  or <a href="https://youtu.be/zca7dOU7jfs">watch on YouTube</a>

</video>

<p>Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn gave many conference talks and also represented SFC at many

government hearings and inquiries. Beginning the year at <a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/schedule/speaker/bradley_m_kuhn/">FOSDEM</a>,

Bradley (and Karen) led the Legal and Policy DevRoom. He then spoke at SCaLE

20x giving a talk titled <a href="https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/20x/presentations/learning-big-failures-improve-foss-advocacy-and-adoption">Learning From the Big Failures To Improve FOSS Advocacy and Adoption</a>.

As a panel member, he was the only representative for the FOSS community on

the FTC's discussion <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/oct/04/ftc-ai-panel/">“Creative Economy and Generative AI“</a></p>

<p>Our Director of Compliance, Denver Gingerich, spoke at SFSCON talking about what it's really like to <a href="https://www.sfscon.it/talks/how-do-you-really-do-gpl-enforcement/">enforce the GPL</a>. His talk at FOSSY titled <a href="https://2023.fossy.us/schedule/presentation/84/">You don't carry a phone?! Improving societal acceptance of abnormal people</a>

was one of the most talked about from our own conference.

Pono represented SFC at <a href="https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/19x">SCaLE

19x</a> and <a href="https://seagl.org">SeaGL</a>, which was great to be back

at community centered conferences.

SFC staffers also participate in key meetings to represent community interests

in a variety of FOSS related discussions concerning security, governmental use

of FOSS and in critical infrastructure discussions and also presented in

classroom to educate students about software freedom.</p>

</div>