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

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

  we began plans to wind down Conservancy's operations.</p>

<h4>2015 successes</h4>

This year has brought a myriad of major successes for Software Freedom

Conservancy:

<ul>

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

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

Monitor</a>, the Godot Game Engine[FIXME]

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

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

interviews and <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/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>

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. We cannot

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

<p>Our most controversial program is our GPL compliance work. 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 us funding

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

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

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

success of software freedom and copyleft, it makes fundraising from companies

harder. While enforcement of the protections around free and open source

software is in the long term interest of the industry, many companies are

reluctant to fund organizations that take on this enforcement task. 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

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

of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement</a>, we cannot prioritize profit in

these actions without compromising on the end goals of that work which is to

help companies become free and open source software users and contributors.