Conservancy & FSF Announce Publish of Principles Copyleft Enforcement

Thu Oct 1 19:39:43 UTC 2015

Primary URLs for this announcement:
  https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/oct/01/compliance-principles/
  https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-conservancy-publish-principles-for-community-oriented-gpl-enforcement
  https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html
  https://fsf.org/licensing/enforcement-principles
  https://twitter.com/conservancy/status/649622549601615872
  https://twitter.com/fsf/status/649623292622565376
  https://identi.ca/conservancy/note/uyvWMXnKSzu_Naj2rRC1Jg
  https://microca.st/fsf/note/wDvmhzATTJCldyy94_u3hA
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    CONSERVANCY & FSF ANNOUNCE PUBLICATION OF PRINCIPLES FOR COPYLEFT ENFORCEMENT

Software Freedom Conservancy announces today the publication of The
Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement. This document,
co-authored with the Free Software Foundation (FSF), outlines basic
guidelines for any organization that seeks to uphold copyleft licenses
on behalf of the public good. In their regular work, Conservancy and FSF
each actively pursue compliance actions for copylefted software. Members
of the public entrust the FSF and Conservancy to uphold the rights
embodied in the GPL family of licenses. The FSF holds copyrights in many
essential GNU packages, and Conservancy not only holds its own
copyrights in BusyBox, the Linux kernel, and Debian, but also has built
coalitions of BusyBox, Debian, Linux, and Samba developers who have
delegated their license enforcement authority to Conservancy. Both
organizations conduct GPL enforcement as transparently as possible, and
provide helpful and abundant educational material (such as their joint
copyleft.org project) for individuals and companies who use and
distribute Open Source and Free Software.

Copyleft license enforcement, as performed by community-oriented
organizations such as Conservancy and FSF, focuses on the promotion of
software freedom as paramount. Publishing the guiding principles behind
this activity clearly explicates this activity, removes uncertainty for
companies who face compliance actions, and also provides criteria for
evaluating whether license compliance is in the community's
interest. The principles enumerated in the document include prioritizing
software freedom over all other ancillary goals, using legal action only
as a last resort, and offering flexibility on rights restoration under
GPLv2's termination clause (GPLv2§4).

“The ugly truth about copyleft compliance is that if there are never any
law suits when companies refuse to comply, then there's very little
incentive to do the right thing,” said Karen M. Sandler, Conservancy's
Executive Director and FOSS legal expert and activist for a decade. “No
copyleft compliance initiatives of any kind will succeed without
enforcement also being conducted by organizations who seek users' rights
and the public good. These principles express our ethical compass for
this enforcement - we conduct this activity in the best interests of
both the free software movement and the industry that has been built
around it.”

Bradley M. Kuhn, Conservancy's President and Distinguished Technologist,
who has, on behalf of both the FSF and Conservancy, regularly enforced
the GPL since 1999, and who first formulated many of this principles
during in those early days, added: “I've enjoyed the growth and adoption
of copyleft software throughout the software industry. However, copyleft
violations remain abysmally prevalent, and even worse, some individuals
and companies succumb to avarice in their copyleft enforcement
work. Companies have reported to Conservancy real confusion about the
motivations of the burgeoning license compliance industry complex. I
have helped my colleagues draft these principles, not only as
documentation of the moral code our organizations follow, but also so
that the entire public can review and evaluate our behavior
transparently and thus distinguish our work from those who use these
important licensing tools nefariously.”

Publishing these principles builds on the work Conservancy and FSF they
began last year with their joint launch of copyleft.org. Copyleft.org
hosts a guide which provides comprehensive explanation about the GPL and
includes a detailed analysis of a complete, corresponding source (CCS)
release for a real-world electronics product. The Guide demonstrates and
discusses the process that Conservancy and the FSF use to determine
whether a CCS candidate complies with the requirements of the GPL. The
Guide itself is freely distributed under copyleft, and we invite
contributions. Karen Sandler will jointly lead a session entitled
Community Licensing Education & Outreach with FSF licensing & compliance
manager Joshua Gay and FSF copyright and licensing associate Donald
R. Robertson, III at the FSF's User Freedom Summit in Cambridge,
Massachusetts this Saturday, October 3. On Tuesday, October 6 in Dublin,
Ireland Bradley M. Kuhn will present at the Embedded Linux Conference a
session entitled A Beautiful Build: Releasing Linux Source Correctly,
which will discuss the pristine example found in the Guide.

FSF has also released its own announcement. A copy of the principles
document will be hosted both on Conservancy's website and on FSF's
website.

About Software Freedom Conservancy

Software Freedom Conservancy is a charitable nonprofit organization that
promotes, improves, develops and defends Free, Libre and Open Source
software projects. Conservancy is home more than thirty software
projects, each supported by a dedicated community of volunteers,
developers and users. Conservancy's projects include some of the most
widely used software systems in the world across many application areas,
including educational software deployed in schools around the globe,
embedded software systems deployed in most consumer electronic devices,
distributed version control developer tools, integrated library services
systems, and widely used graphics and art programs. It is the home of
the award winning internship program Outreachy, which helps people from
groups underrepresented in free and open source software get involved. A
full list of Conservancy's member projects is available. Conservancy
enables its projects' communities to focus on what they do best:
creating innovative software and advancing computing for the public's
benefit.

Media Contacts

Karen M. Sandler <info at sfconservancy.org>
Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy
+1-212-461-3245

Related URLs of interest from this press release:
  https://copyleft.org/guide/
  https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidepa2.html#x17-116000II
  https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidepa3.html#x26-152000III
  https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/compliance-situations
  https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2012/feb/01/gpl-enforcement/
  http://gpl.guide/pristine-example

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-- 
Bradley M. Kuhn
President & Distinguished Technologist of Software Freedom Conservancy