blog/planet-debianzack's home pagehttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/planet-debian/I'm in a Hurry - Zack's Blog (on Planet Debian)ikiwiki2017-02-25T15:15:10ZSoftware Freedom Conservancy matchinghttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2017/02/Software_Freedom_Conservancy_matching/2017-02-25T15:15:10Z2017-02-25T15:15:10Z
<h1>become a Conservancy supporter by February 28th and have your
donation matched</h1>
<p>Non-profits that provide project support have proven themselves
to be necessary for the success and advancement of individual
projects and Free Software as a whole. The <a href=
"https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a> (founded in
1985) serves as a home to GNU projects and a canonical list of Free
Software licenses. The <a href="https://opensource.org/">Open
Source Initiative</a> came about in 1998, maintaining the Open
Source Definition, based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines,
with affiliate members including Debian, Mozilla, and the Wikimedia
Foundation. <a href="https://www.spi-inc.org/">Software in the
Public Interest (SPI)</a> was created in the late 90s largely to
act as a fiscal sponsor for projects like Debian, enabling it to do
things like accept donations and handle other financial
transactions.</p>
<p>More recently (2006), the <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/">Software Freedom Conservancy</a> was
formed. Among other activities—like serving as a fiscal sponsor,
infrastructure provider, and support organization for a number of
free software projects including Git, Outreachy, and the <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/News/2015/20150817">Debian Copyright
Aggregation Project</a>—they protect user freedom via copyleft
compliance and GPL enforcement work. Without a willingness to act
when licenses are violated, copyleft has no power. Through
communication, collaboration, and—<a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html">only
as last resort</a>—litigation, the Conservancy helps everyone who
uses a freedom respecting license.</p>
<p>The Conservancy has been aggressively fundraising in order to
not just continue its current operations, but expand their work,
staff, and efforts. They recently launched a <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><strong>donation matching
campaign</strong></a> thanks to the generosity and dedication of an
anonymous donor. Everyone who joins the Conservancy as a annual
Supporter <strong>by February 28th</strong> will have their
donation matched.</p>
<p>A number of us are already <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">supporters</a>,
and hope you will join us in supporting the world of an
organization that supports us.</p>