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<div class="breadcrumbs">
<p><a href="/">Home</a> / <a href="/about">Who We Are</a></p>
<a href="https://youtu.be/yCCxMfW0LTM">(watch on Youtube)</a>
</video></p>
<br>
<p><h3>The wide range of work we engage in is supported by people like you. </h3></p>
<p>We are so proud that we're funded by individuals and stay unbeholden to corporate interests and pressures. We stand up for developers, consumers and those who have been historically excluded. We work to make technology truly fair for all. </p>
<p>Thank you for helping making this work possible:</p>
<ul>
<li>Standing up for consumer rights in <a href="/copyleft-compliance/">copyleft compliance</a></li>
<li>Supporting <a href="https://outreachy.org">Outreachy</a> with its increasing number of interns</li>
<li>Bringing <a href="/vizio">legal action against prolific license violators</a></li>
<li>Hiring team members to get projects <a href="https://reproducible-builds.org/news/">like Reproducible Builds</a> to continue pushing the forefront of software reproducibility</li>
</ul>
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<h3 id="YearInReview">Our Year in Review</h3>
<div data-read-more="Summary of our year…">
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<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>
<h3 id="WritingAndSpeaking">Writing and Speaking</h3>
<div data-read-more="Find out about our writing and speaking engagements…">
<p>Our staff has been presenting and speaking about software freedom all year.
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>
or <a href="https://youtu.be/zca7dOU7jfs">watch on YouTube</a></p>
</div>
<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 the host of a keynote discussion at FOSSY, Bradley facilitated a
community discussion about the RHEL policy change</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>
<h3 id="Highlights">Highlights from some of our projects</h3>
<div data-read-more="Read more about our projects…">
<p>We've raised, administered and/or facilitated $1.8 million to improve
software freedom directly! This includes contractors, interns and students,
administrators, and grants for creation, distribution and maintenance of free
software projects. Part of the unique position of our organization is the
alt="Group Picture: Outreachy interns, mentors, and community coordinators gathered to celebrate the 1,000 interns milestone in Lagos, Nigeria." />
<p>Group Picture: Outreachy interns, mentors, and community coordinators gathered to celebrate the 1,000 interns milestone in Lagos, Nigeria.</p>
<p>You can view a <a href="https://diode.zone/w/p/25ifUPw9Lx42nrb14h41Ru">video of the celebration here.</a></p>
</div>
<p><b>Outreachy</b> accepted 63 interns in the December 2022 cohort, and 64
interns in the May 2023 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
people subject to systemic bias and impacted by underrepresentation in
technology. Celebrating our 1000th intern (!!!), there were celebrations
featuring alumni and current interns all over the world. </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 fifth year, supporting 32 students in 3 cities this
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@@ -262,49 +262,49 @@ very exciting developments for the project. Creation of a new <a href="https://i
<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>. Attendance 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="HelpUs">Help us Continue this Work</h3>
<div style="overflow: auto">
<div class="picture-small right">
<img src="/img/scaled-LLW-2015-Conservancy-Supporters-by-Carlo-Piana-CC-0.jpg" alt="Zack, Karen, John and Jim pose, mostly wearing the vintage t-shirt!" />
<img src="{% static 'img/scaled-LLW-2015-Conservancy-Supporters-by-Carlo-Piana-CC-0.jpg' %}" alt="Zack, Karen, John and Jim pose, mostly wearing the vintage t-shirt!" />
<p>Sustainers pose with Karen! <br/>From left: Stefano “Zack” Zacchiroli, Karen M. Sandler, John Sullivan, and Jim Wright</p>
</div>
<p>We are beyond thankful for the ability to continue our work — which
only continues due to <strong>your financial contributions</strong>. We
recognize that not everyone has the same financial leeway to donate as they
have in the past. But please consider giving what you can so that our
organization can continue to advocate and support the rights of all
software users. We work hard and efficiently, and accomplish so much with
our small staff. We hope — through our hard work, creativity, and
passionate dedication — that we've demonstrated over the years how
Software Freedom Conservancy continues to be the beacon of change for
software freedom that the world needs. <a href="/donate/">Please consider
donating now!</a></p>
</div>
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