We helped folks stay connected, even when travel and in-person meetings could not happen. We gathered digitally every Thursday with all who wanted to join since early March to discuss @@ -110,8 +111,11 @@ helping family and friends to use FOSS tools to discussing impactful presentations concerting copyleft to how to dismantle systemic racism in free software to important software freedom policy issues like standing up to fight the DMCA.
+Read more about staying connected
Our Outreachy internship program became even more essential during this difficult time. Everyone needs remote work now, and to learn how to effectively work remotely. This year, we achieved the most internships in @@ -134,8 +138,11 @@ directive. Sure, companies write lots of FOSS, but they focus only on projects benefit their profit motive and self-interest. We fund FOSS development that benefits everyone and we only fund software development that completely respects your software freedom and rights.
+Read more about paying people to work on software freedom
This year, we expanded our plans and involvement on key issues of software freedom policy. We are known throughout the FOSS community as the organization that knows the details of FOSS policy — from project governance, to licensing to Codes of @@ -151,12 +158,18 @@ went even further this year, and applied for occasionally discuss GPL enforcement matters publicly, we launched this year our Strategic GPL Enforcement Plan, and our companion Firmware Liberation Project. These two new initiatives have just begun and they need your support and help to succeed.
+Read more about our policy work this year
In 2020, Conservancy welcomed two important new projects. The Institute for Computing in Research runs a mentoring program designed to bridge inequities in tech by training teenage students to do rigorous scientific research using free software. OpenWrt is a critical FOSS wireless router project that demonstrates the long lasting positive results of strategic GPL enforcement. We also recognize that communities change over time. In addition to adding new projects, we took the time this past year to sunset some of our projects that no longer had a charitable focus.
We were also pleased to welcome Allison Randal, a steadfast advocate of software freedom, to our Board of Directors.
+Read more about our new member projects and board member
FOSS events and conferences have always been an essential component of FOSS, but this year, the pandemic thwarted our usual event system an infrastructure. Conservancy has been at the center of transitioning events to online formats for @@ -176,6 +189,8 @@ as we look hopefully forward to an in-person Copyleft Conf 2022.
We participated in many exciting events organized by others. Before travel was canceled, we presented multiple talks at LCA and on the FOSDEM main stage, helped organize the Legal & Policy DevRoom at FOSDEM, spoke to students and faculty at Oxford University, ran a workshop at Open Source 101 and delivered keynotes at CHAOSScon, Git Merge and the OpenUK Healthcare event. Once in-person events were no longer possible, we participated in many virtual events, including GUADEC, DebConf, ÖzgürKon and State of the Source. Our Executive Director was a featured speaker at VentCon, a conference urgently organized in May for folks working on FOSS projects for ventilators at a time when making sure that hospitals had enough access to ventilators to treat the surge in COVID-19 patients was a top concern.
We also remain ready to continue our work of helping to sponsor travel for our member projects and their events when travel becomes safe again. Before we ceased our conferences and travel, we funded over $60,000 worth of travel to important events, on pace for what could have been one of our biggest travel sponsorship years. We invested remaining travel funds into improving online infrastructure and planning for how to keep FOSS engaged without these essential in-person events.
+Read more about our events and conferences
We know this year brought unforeseen financial challenges. Some of you have