From info at sfconservancy.org Mon Mar 22 12:09:02 2021 From: info at sfconservancy.org (Software Freedom Conservancy) Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2021 05:09:02 -0700 Subject: Free Software Foundation Honors Conservancy's Policy Fellow; Bradley M. Kuhn wins FSF's Award for the Advancement of Free Software for His Copyleft Advocacy & Enforcement Message-ID: <87o8fbcrvl.fsf@ebb.org> FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION HONORS CONSERVANCY'S POLICY FELLOW Bradley M. Kuhn wins FSF's Award for the Advancement of Free Software for His Copyleft Advocacy & Enforcement Bradley M. Kuhn, Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence at Software Freedom Conservancy, on Saturday night received the Free Software Foundation's annual award for the Advancement of Free Software. This unique FSF award is currently the only award given for individual achievements in software freedom activism. Bradley received this award in his very first year of eligibility. In his acceptance speech, Bradley gave advice to software freedom activists, noting that all should follow a few simple principles: take care in the words they choose in their communications, be prepared to "speak truth to power" (both to powerful proprietary software companies and to other Free Software leaders), stubbornly refuse to use or develop proprietary software, and find ways to bolster and coordinate with other important social justice causes, such as those that seek to ameliorate systemic bias and combat climate change. John Sullivan, Executive Director of the FSF, presented Bradley with this prestigious award. After the ceremony, John noted: “Bradley earned FSF's Award for the Advancement of Free Software for many contributions, but most importantly, his tireless and absolutely necessary work on copyleft education and principled, community-oriented GPL enforcement. Bradley has done more for GPL compliance than anyone. He continues that work with Conservancy and the 2017 winner of this award, Karen Sandler. These awards show both FSF's appreciation for what they've already done and our support as they continue standing up for our software freedoms.” Bradley expressed gratitude for the hundreds of individuals who have helped him in his lifelong activism for software freedom — thanking in particular Larry Wall — creator of Perl and inaugural winner of this same award. In the Perl community that Larry founded, Bradley learned the value of FOSS collaboration and software sharing. After the award ceremony, Conservancy hosted a virtual reception open to the public via Big Blue Button (a FOSS alternative to Zoom and other proprietary video chat platforms). A mix of longtime software freedom luminaries as well as newcomers joined to congratulate Bradley, and express the positive impact he has had on the movement and their lives personally. “My paramount goal is always to make a real difference for the better, and it is heartwarming to know that so many of you appreciate my work”, Bradley responded in the final toast of the evening while choking back tears. Bradley also acknowledged that his work in collaboration with Conservancy's Executive Director, Karen Sandler, has allowed them “to achieve accomplishments in Free Software that neither of [them] could achieve working alone”. While thrilled to receive this individual honor, Bradley views his collaboration with Karen and Conservancy's staff as an excellent example of how software freedom activism is bigger than any single individual's achievements or views. Bradley added: “we succeed with the best results for the future of software freedom when we work together, set aside personal ambition, and reject cult of personality.” Bradley joins many winners of FSF's awards associated with Conservancy. In addition to Karen, Deb Nicholson (who volunteered on our Project Evaluation Committee from 2014-2020 and was employed our Director of Community Operations from early 2018 until late 2020) won this award in 2019. Outreachy (a diversity initiative for FOSS projects and a Conservancy member project) received FSF's Award for Project of Social Benefit in 2014. Finally, Outreachy graduate Clarissa Lima Borges, received the first Outstanding New Free Software Contributor Award last year. Also honored with other FSF awards on Saturday were: Alyssa Rosenzweig, a developer who leads the important Panfrost project (receiving the Outstanding New Free Software Contributor Award), and the CiviCRM project (receiving the Award for Project of Social Benefit). Conservancy also congratulates Alyssa and CiviCRM on their well-deserved awards. Relevant URLs and Related Links: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2021/mar/22/fsf-award-bkuhn/ https://sfconservancy.org/videos/2021-03-20_bkuhn-accepts-FSF-award.webm https://twitter.com/conservancy/status/1373967370197209088 https://mastodon.technology/@conservancy/105933354257006205 https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-awards-winners-announced-civicrm-bradley-kuhn-and-alyssa-rosenzweig -- Become a Conservancy Supporter Now: https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/ (And then ask a friend to become a Supporter, too! :) From pono at sfconservancy.org Tue Aug 3 21:28:48 2021 From: pono at sfconservancy.org (Daniel Pono Takamori) Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2021 14:28:48 -0700 Subject: The Institute for Computing in Research announces new interns in Portland Message-ID: URL: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2021/aug/03/icr-portland/ The Institute for Computing in Research Announces Portland Cohort One of Conservancy's member projects The Institute for Computing in Research is launching a new branch of their mentoring and internship program for high school students this week in Portland, Oregon. This unique paid internship introduces high school students to software freedom as part of a summer research position that focuses on computing in the sciences. We're very happy to be hosting and facilitating an initiative that is lending long time experience to fostering a new generation of scientists. The program has run in Santa Fe, NM in the past, due to its founder's proximity to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, but this year it has expanded to a second cohort in the pacific northwest. Portland has a rich history of technology and computing institutions (the so called Silicon Forest), so we're very hopeful that this program will help get more young people involved with STEM minded trajectories in their careers. Mark Galassi (a board member of Conservancy's) founded the program in 2019 and this is the third year it has run. In it's first year 5 internships were given out and 9 in 2020. This year there are 17(11 in Santa Fe and 6 in Portland)! Focusing on pairing 10th, 11th, and 12th graders with mentors in the sciences, the students will work on computing focused research projects in various disciplines. Supported by academics at Portland State University, Reed College, and Oregon State University, the cohort in Portland has projects in computational biology, natural language processing, pure math, and AI and game theory. Exposure to mentors, communities and the varied academic disciplines is a great opportunity for these budding scientists. Bridging the gap between programs like Outreachy (another member project of Conservancy's, Outreachy, which provides internships to historically underrepresented groups in technology), Google Summer of Code and other open source internship options with the academic programs like Research Experience for Undergraduates, the ICR is filling a vital role in connecting FOSS and the academy. Showing students computing tools used in industry and the workflows and day to day experiences of academics doing research. Typically these kind of positions are unpaid and not everyone has the luxury of working unpaid for a summer. It's this kind of equitable thinking that makes the ICR standout to us and why we are pleased to work with them. This pilot program in Portland is supported by funding from the Oregon Community Foundation with space donated by Beaverton Round. If you would like to donate to The Institute for Computing in Research[0] or The Software Freedom Conservancy please visit our support page[1]. About The Institute for Computing in Research: The Institute for Computing in Research is a consortium of scholars and students who work on research and pedagogical aspects of using advanced computing methods for research and scholarship. Any application of computing to physical science, life science, social science, arts and humanities is of interest to our researchers. We are located in Santa Fe, New Mexico and in Portland, Oregon. About Software Freedom Conservancy: Conservancy is a resourceful, non-profit organization dedicated to helping people take control of their computing experience by growing the software freedom movement, supporting community-driven alternatives to proprietary software and defending free software builders with practical initiatives. Conservancy believes that the future of software should be for everyone, and in particular, home users of small electronic devices such as wireless routers. Social Media posts: https://mastodon.technology/@conservancy/106694185922754295 https://twitter.com/conservancy/status/1422662006016942084 [0]: https://computinginresearch.org/support-us/ [1]: https://sfconservancy.org/donate/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 228 bytes Desc: not available URL: From info at sfconservancy.org Tue Oct 19 18:06:29 2021 From: info at sfconservancy.org (Software Freedom Conservancy) Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2021 14:06:29 -0400 Subject: Software Freedom Conservancy files lawsuit against California TV manufacturer Vizio Inc. for GPL violations Message-ID: URL: https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html ###################################################################### Software Freedom Conservancy files lawsuit against California TV manufacturer Vizio Inc. for GPL violations Litigation is historic in nature due to its focus on consumer rights, filing as third-party beneficiary FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE IRVINE, Calif. (Oct. 19, 2021) Software Freedom Conservancy announced today it has filed a lawsuit against Vizio Inc. for what it calls repeated failures to fulfill even the basic requirements of the General Public License (GPL). The lawsuit alleges that Vizio’s TV products, built on its SmartCast system, contain software that Vizio unfairly appropriated from a community of developers who intended consumers to have very specific rights to modify, improve, share, and reinstall modified versions of the software. The GPL is a copyleft license that ensures end users the freedom to run, study, share, and modify the software. Copyleft is a kind of software licensing that leverages the restrictions of copyright, but with the intent to promote sharing (using copyright licensing to freely use and repair software). Software Freedom Conservancy, a nonprofit organization focused on ethical technology, is filing the lawsuit as the purchaser of a product which has copylefted code. This approach makes it the first legal case that focuses on the rights of individual consumers as third-party beneficiaries of the GPL. “That’s what makes this litigation unique and historic in terms of defending consumer rights,” says Karen M. Sandler, the organization’s executive director. According to the lawsuit, a consumer of a product such as this has the right to access the source code so that it can be modified, studied, and redistributed (under the appropriate license conditions). “We are asking the court to require Vizio to make good on its obligations under copyleft compliance requirements,” says Sandler. She explains that in past litigation, the plaintiffs have always been copyright holders of the specific GPL code. In this case, Software Freedom Conservancy hopes to demonstrate that it's not just the copyright holders, but also the receivers of the licensed code who are entitled to rights. The lawsuit suit seeks no monetary damages, but instead seeks access to the technical information that the copyleft licenses require Vizio to provide to all customers who purchase its TVs (specifically, the plaintiff is asking for the technical information via “specific performance” rather than “damages”). “Software Freedom Conservancy is standing up for customers who are alienated and exploited by the technology on which they increasingly rely,” says Sandler, adding that the lawsuit also aims to help educate consumers about their right to repair their devices as well as show policy makers that there are mechanisms for corporate accountability already in place that can be leveraged through purchasing power and collective action. Copyleft licensing was designed as an ideological alternative to the classic corporate software model because it: allows people who receive the software to fix their devices, improve them and control them; entitles people to curtail surveillance and ads; and helps people continue to use their devices for a much longer time (instead of being forced to purchase new ones). “The global supply chain shortages that have affected everything from cars to consumer electronics underscore one of the reasons why it is important to be able to repair products we already own,” says Sandler. “Even without supply chain challenges, the forced obsolescence of devices like TVs isn’t in the best interest of the consumer or even the planet. This is another aspect of what we mean by ‘ethical technology.’ Throwing away a TV because its software is no longer supported by its manufacturer is not only wasteful, it has dire environmental consequences. Consumers should have more control over this, and they would if companies like Vizio played by the rules.“ According to Sandler, the organization first raised the issue of non-compliance with the GPL with Vizio in August 2018. After a year of diplomatic attempts to work with the company, it was not only still refusing to comply, but stopped responding to inquiries altogether as of January 2020. “By July 2021, the TV model that we originally complained was non-compliant was discontinued,” says Sandler. “When we purchased new models, we found that despite our efforts they still had no source code included with the device, nor any offer for source code. People buying these models would never know that there was anything special about the software in these devices, or that they had any rights whatsoever connected with the software on their TVs.” Software Freedom Conservancy analyzed the TVs and concluded that not only was Vizio not providing the source code and technical information that copyleft licenses require, Vizio was not even informing its customers about copylefted software and the rights it gives them as consumers. ABOUT SOFTWARE FREEDOM CONSERVANCY Software Freedom Conservancy is a nonprofit organization centered around ethical technology. Our mission is to ensure the right to repair, improve, and reinstall software. We promote and defend these rights through fostering free and open source software (FOSS) projects, driving initiatives that actively make technology more inclusive, and advancing policy strategies that defend FOSS (such as copyleft). The organization is incorporated in New York. For more information, go to sfconservancy.org. More information is available here: https://sfconservancy.org/vizio From pono at sfconservancy.org Thu Oct 28 20:59:48 2021 From: pono at sfconservancy.org (Daniel Pono Takamori) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2021 13:59:48 -0700 Subject: Software Freedom Conservancy's DMCA Exemption Requests Granted Message-ID: URL: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2021/oct/28/2021-DMCA-final-exemptions-win/ ####################################################################### Software Freedom Conservancy's DMCA Exemption Requests Granted for Alternate Router Firmware, Copyleft Compliance Investigation and More Software Freedom Conservancy is proud to announce that its efforts to stand up for the rights of FOSS developers have been successful and that it has been granted almost all of the exemptions that it requested in the Librarian of Congress' recent rule making, according to the final rule Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies [0], which was published today. Effective today, the Librarian of Congress ("LoC") granted DMCA exemptions for installing alternate firmwares on routers and for investigating copyleft compliance, and the exemption that Software Freedom Conservancy previously applied for and received on Smart TVs was also expanded. While our formal request to extend the security research exemption to include privacy research was not granted, the Register clarified that privacy research is indeed included in security research. Our executive director, Karen Sandler, also participated as an individual in a request to expand the existing exemption for medical devices which was also successful. Jailbreaking of routers Our exemption request to allow the jailbreaking of routers and other networking devices to enable the installation of alternative firmware was approved for network router FOSS projects such as our OpenWrt project. This exemption permits users, after-market, to install FOSS firmwares (such as OpenWrt) on wireless router hardware that has DRM'd firmwares from the manufacturer. As the LoC noted in its rule making supplemental information, "the prohibition on circumvention is likely to prevent users from installing free and open source software (“FOSS”) on routers and other networking devices and that there are no viable alternatives to circumvention to accomplish that purpose." This exemption supports an important consumer rights issue of enabling life cycle management of our devices, which frees consumers from the "planned obsolescence" of being forced to upgrade devices at the whim of manufacturers and allows them to take control of their own routers. Allowing alternate firmware (like our project OpenWrt) gives us so much more freedom in how we manage our devices. Investigation We were also successful in seeking an exemption for circumvention of technological measures for purposes of investigating and confirming violations of FOSS license. This explicitly allows Software Freedom Conservancy and others to continue enforcement of copyleft licenses in the face of violators' efforts to thwart us with technological restrictions and the power of this law that, ironically, can make such work illegal. As an organization that stands up for the rights of users (see our recently filed case against Vizio) [1], we can now be confident in our efforts to make sure corporations are held to their end of the copyleft bargain, even if they seek to obscure their disregard for the license. However, while the LoC otherwise granted the exemption we asked for on every other kind of device, they added one limitation. The LoC explicitly left out video game consoles from the types of devices on which TPMs (a more general term for DRM) may be circumvented, a baffling conclusion which reflects the strong lobbying against our work. Privacy issues Our third exemption requested expansion of the existing security research exemptions to also permit good-faith testing, investigation, and correction of privacy issues that are not otherwise covered by existing statutory or temporary exemptions. During this process, we noted that the similar exemption for security research fell short of protecting work on privacy issues, and asked for either an expanded exemption or a clarification that the existing exemption also covered privacy research. The LoC recognized the importance of this exemption, and, because the Register in its recommendations clarified that the security research exemption does indeed also apply to privacy research, there was no need to extend the current exemption for privacy research. This clarification brings safety to those who test devices for their handling of private information, regardless of whether those devices intended for the information to be collected and shared or not. As the Register wrote in its recommendations, "the exemption does not draw a distinction between vulnerabilities that the copyright owner authorized and those that were unauthorized." Medical Devices Our Executive Director Karen Sandler, along with Hugo Campos and Jay Radcliffe, filed for DMCA exemptions to medical devices which was submitted and defended by the USC Gould School of Law. Control over the tech we rely on is never more poignant than thesoftware in our own bodies and the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how important it is to have the right to repair medical equipment and to retrieve data on those devices. Sandler participated in the original rule making in 2016 and the new ruling expands the existing exemption to cover all medical devices, not just ones that are implanted, and also for circumvention that is undertaken on behalf of a patient, not just by the patient themselves. Going Forward Overall we applaud the actions taken by the Librarian of Congress on the exemptions we were involved in as well as others granted in the same process. This decision underscores the need for continued advocacy in the field to fight the giant financial interests that seek to strip end users of their rights. We are proud of our active license compliance work and advocacy like this and we rely on your financial contributions. If you like the work we are doing and want to support our on-going efforts to protect consumers rights and software freedom, please consider donating to us [2]. We also thank our attorneys, Pam Chestek and Aaron Williamson, whose expertise and hard work was invaluable to this process. Many thanks also to Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), whose mission is to support, promote, and enhance digital communication and broader communication science and technology, to promote Amateur Radio, scientific research, experimentation, education, development, open access, and innovation in information and communication technology, and who supported this work. Links to social media: https://mastodon.technology/@conservancy/107181015700983536 https://twitter.com/conservancy/status/1453819298011508761 [0] - https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2021-23311.pdf [1] - https://sfconservancy.org/vizio/ [2] - https://sfconservancy.org/donate/ From info at sfconservancy.org Tue Nov 23 19:53:35 2021 From: info at sfconservancy.org (Software Freedom Conservancy) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2021 11:53:35 -0800 Subject: Software Freedom Conservancy donors challenged with largest match yet Message-ID: Software Freedom Conservancy donors challenged with largest match yet Software Freedom Conservancy is pleased to announce that its annual fundraiser starts today URL: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2021/nov/23/2021-fundraiser-announcement Links to social media: https://mastodon.technology/@conservancy/107328043758760051 https://twitter.com/conservancy/status/1463229030887411715 Donations will be matched (up to $159,191) thanks almost entirely to contributions by a few very generous anonymous donors. Contributions by individuals keep Software Freedom Conservancy afloat, and it's with your help that we are empowered to do the vital and sometimes overlooked work in software freedom. We also have some gracious donors who brought the amount up a little more to the prime number you see above: Chris Neugebauer and Josh Simmons, Mark Galassi, Stephen Paul Weber, Tony Sebro, and VM Brasseur are contributing to our match fund and encourage others to give as well. Over the coming weeks, you'll hear more about our projects, initiatives and success stories from those involved with Software Freedom Conservancy. As one of the large anonymous donors commented this year: “I support [Software Freedom Conservancy] because they have vision and the drive to achieve that vision. Their leadership on inclusion and on standing up for copyleft, among other things, are sorely needed for the success of the movement both today and in the future.” While it's been a strenuous year and a half with the world still in disarray, our work continues the struggle of advocating and legally empowering all users of software to their rights. We have supported the important work of our member projects; getting DMCA exemptions so that, for example, everyone can install OpenWrt on their routers; and supporting Outreachy as they have expanded to more interns than ever. And we launched our consumer-rights-focused compliance lawsuit against Vizio. To find out more about the important work you support when you make a donation, please see our Sustainers page here. https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/ To have your gift matched, please donate by January 15. Thank you for helping us reach our goal!