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We recently posted a lengthy write-up of the licensing team’s activities in 2019. Although we have been really busy, we didn’t want to miss the chance to share some specifics about our activities in October. That month, members of our licensing and campaigns teams headed down to North Carolina to spread the message of software freedom. First, on the 14th & 15th, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) staffed a booth at the ATO conference where we reminded hundreds of people that freedom is better than just being open. Next, on October 16th, our licensing and compliance team held another Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminar.

We had a great time representing software freedom at the ATO conference. ATO was a huge conference with almost 5,000 people from all over the world in attendance. We were fortunate to have prime real estate for our booth location, which was at a bottleneck right outside the keynote auditoriums, and it provided us with a constant stream of visitors. We gave away 200 Bash stickers, and we happily said goodbye to four adorable baby gnu plushies, along with many T-shirts and books. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring our new DRM dust jackets, and we only discovered this because someone asked for one. It was a very busy and full day of introducing people to the FSF and meeting our fervent supporters. As usual, we also hosted a meetup after the conference. Well over twenty people joined us, and we feasted on fried Brussels sprouts and boiled peanuts, among other tasty appetizers. Meetups are always a great time to socialize with free software supporters, and this was no exception, as we had staff from the GNOME Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, and the Software Freedom Conservancy in attendance. While chatting among peers, one of the attendees informed us about a barcade right around the corner requiring a picture of your face to enter the establishment, and that those images are allegedly shared with the police. Yikes! The idea of giving up your whereabouts so wantonly seems like a horrible activity to normalize.

Following the two days of the ATO conference, we hosted our CLE seminar. Attendees of the full day seminar got a comprehensive overview of copyleft and other practical concepts in the GNU family of licenses. They also learned about ethical considerations important to lawyers working with clients involved in free software, and other current topics in free software licensing.

After the morning pleasantries and an introduction by FSF program manager Zoë Kooyman, FSF executive director John Sullivan gave an introduction to the GNU General Public License (GPL). Next up Marc Jones, JD, in-house counsel and compliance engineer at Civic Actions, took the stage and discussed how the courts view the GPL based on a variety of precedent-setting court cases.

What followed was a quiz-show styled learning activity, "Malpractice! The Free Software Ethics Quiz Show!" hosted by Justin C. Colannino, JD, attorney at Microsoft, and Donald R. Robertson, III, JD, licensing and compliance manager of the FSF. You might find this an odd pairing, but the FSF has been working with Justin for several years, since before he went to Microsoft. Presented in the style of Jeopardy, this was a fun time for all, and it presented a platform for tangent discussions and interesting view points.

Pamela Chestek, JD, principal of Chestek Legal, next discussed the topic of trademarks and free software, delving into the governance of free software projects, the “forking” of projects, and some history of a discussion between the Mozilla Foundation and the Debian Project involving trademark. The day’s final talk was given by Donald, about the dangers of the current spate of license proliferation.

After the CLE, we hosted another meetup for seminar attendees. Given that so many of the attendees were lawyers in the free software space, the discussions and debates about the legal landscape surrounding software freedom continued on late into the evening.

Between the hundreds of conversations at the ATO conference, the chats among peers at the meetups, and the informative CLE, it was a fantastic couple of days for free software education. All fun and socializing aside, the CLE seminars are an essential component of the licensing and compliance team’s outreach and education efforts, and is the only CLE offered by a free software organization. We look forward to another CLE in 2020, and we hope to see you there!

To support work like our legal seminar series, here’s what you can do to get involved and help make the world a better place:

• Become an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.
• Support the Free Software Foundation with a donation.
• Find a place to help out by becoming a volunteer.

The Free Software Foundation's (FSF) campaigns team works tirelessly to spread the message to the world that all software must be free. Campaigning for free software takes creativity, hard work, and a dedicated community. We amplify free software organizations and projects, mobilize activists, and provide resources. We're only three people, but we are the point of connection for hundreds of thousands of supporters annually. You hold the power to exponentially increase this number. It is our goal to make the free software conversation a kitchen table issue, and we need your help!

Since many families and friends get together at the end of the year, we worked with our recent FSF intern, Valessio Brito, on translating some of the reasons why our fight is so important into illustrations, to facilitate conversations during these gatherings.

The images we developed, which we are using in our annual fundraiser, seek to raise the issue of free software by focusing on common issues with proprietary software, like privacy violations, exemplified by a simple flashlight app and its permissions in your device. We visualize issues like data mining, back doors into your devices, and the vulnerability of cameras and microphones in so-called "smart devices." We also comment on Digital Restrictions Management's (DRM) power over you and your devices. We put a lot of thought into designing these images to be conversation starters, and now we're asking you, as the free software community and our main channel of communication, to share them. You can find the images, their embed codes, and their .SVG source files on the FSF Web site. Please use them to start conversations with the people you care about, using the hashtag #ISupportFreeSoftware.

And if you're able to, can you take the next step and become an associate member today to help us reach our goal of welcoming 600 new associate members before December 31st? As a special bonus, all new and renewing annual associate members ($120+) can choose to receive one of our exclusive year-end gifts.

If you can't become a member yourself, you can make a donation instead. Every dollar you contribute helps the campaigns team bring awareness to the cause.

Why free software needs you

It is not always easy to quantify the work we do here in the campaigns team. Developing campaigns, writing articles, creating online educational resources and other tools, updating pages on a range of Web sites, organizing events, organizing protests and creative attention-getting actions both online and offline, working together with other organizations, and staying up to date with the most recent developments in both proprietary, as well as free, software is a full time job for the three of us, and we wish we had more time.

Internally, the principle of using free software is first and foremost. In our digital culture of today, using only ethical tools is a challenging effort if you want to convey an important message. And so we are always looking for ways to reach people without compromising our own values or setting a bad example. We choose not to weaponize analytics, or networks like Facebook or Google that exploit users in order to increase the reach of our campaigns, nor do we want to use a data mining company like Eventbrite to promote our events and handle our registrations. Instead, we choose to remain true to our mission and reject these companies in favor of your right to freedom-respecting online communications.

Making ethical decisions, however, also means that spreading our message is much more challenging. We therefore depend heavily on the engagement of free software enthusiasts like you to spread the word with us about our events, campaigns, and collaborations, and to let us know about what event or project we should be boosting or supporting. With two of the three team members starting only this year, we have worked hard on educating ourselves, updating our resources, and strengthening our connection to the community. And with your help, we can do so much more in the year to come.

Visual advocacy

We are well aware that advocating a social movement has become increasingly visual, so we work closely with designers to illustrate our message and calls to action in both static and moving images. We need to break through the noise with appealing imagery, help explain the issues we face in an engaging way, and make it easily shareable. This year, we visually improved the quality of the biannual Free Software Bulletin, the LibrePlanet wiki, and the LibrePlanet conference Web site, and we've created shareable images, and updated our donation pages. Next on the list will be a review of our printed advocacy materials.

Making connections

In-person experiences are valuable and important for the FSF to network and to learn from other free software enthusiasts, as well as to help us spread the message and bring new people into the fold.

This year, we organized four member meetups in different locations in the US, and we hosted free software introductions to students of local public schools. We also organized the LibrePlanet conference with live instances on IRC (#libreplanet on Freenode) and mumble, and livestreamed all 40 sessions on social justice and technology. We held our annual associate member meeting, a "hackathon," an FSF office open house, and two social events during this time as well. We were also one of two EmacsConf satellite instances, and took to the streets in protest of DRM twice this year, once (in conjunction with fourteen online partners) to stand up for students against Pearson Education for the International Day Against DRM (IDAD), and once against Disney+ at the opening night of Frozen II, here in Boston.

To organize quality events such as LibrePlanet, IDAD, Continuing Legal education (CLE) seminars, and others, we need to invite speakers and collaborators from all over the world, and we also need to make sure the events are accessible remotely. With your support, we can add an additional "workshop room" to the annual LibrePlanet conference, host smaller educational gatherings and talks throughout the year, do more student outreach, and grant more speakers and attendees access to events by growing our scholarship fund. We will work together with other organizers to set up and promote local instances of events, like an upcoming LibrePlanet 2020 satellite in Ontario, Canada, and we are developing a program to help financially support free software local activist groups.

Public speaking is another way of increasing our footprint in the community. Campaigns manager Greg Farough spoke at a local maker space, and executive director John Sullivan traveled to both South America and Europe to talk about free software issues this year. We also host informational booths all over the world, with the help of volunteers and our operations team. These are very effective way of reaching a large audience, and so we want to do more of it.

The campaigns team is at the center of all communications and events here at the FSF, working closely with all other teams. Along with the tech team, we are always thinking about how we can improve the user experience of our campaigns and our Web sites. Together, we are working on developing a petition site to allow us to turn around signature actions quickly, and on a major update to the fsf.org Web site, which will enhance user experience on mobile phones. With the licensing team, we work to release the latest Respects Your Freedom (RYF) announcements, and we organize the CLE seminars to educate law professionals on licensing issues.

Free software needs you

The physical moments, like the seminars, meetups, speaking engagements, and conferences, are in-depth, valuable meetings with people where we learn and educate at the same time. Online, we hope to inspire people, show newcomers an entry into the world of free software, and give others a voice. On announcement days, we turn our local Boston office into a bustling news room while we edit all communications, talk about targeting and staying on message, brainstorm visuals, and line up the timing of all the separate elements.

We do this work with passion, in a community that time and time again shows us how much you care, and we therefore ask you to help us recruit. We need to overcome the false sense of safety and freedom created by proprietary software company marketing machines executed on mainstream media. Making ethical decisions means not taking the easy way out, and it takes all of us. Just imagine, if each person reading this message recruited just 5 others into the community, the free software movement would immediately be in the millions.

Images by Valessio Brito, Copyright © 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc., licensed under CC0, no rights reserved.

Since 2010, the LibrePlanet wiki has provided a space for connection between free software activists, with the following mission statement: "To empower a global network of both local and project-based teams, all working together to advance free software as a social movement for user freedom."

This idea of participation and space for connection between free software activists is what motivates both the wiki and the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) yearly conference by the same name. Our LibrePlanet wiki uses the same software as what powers Wikipedia, which makes it the perfect tool for global collaborative work. We use the wiki as a tool to help organize free software supporters all over the world, so everyone can collaborate around their projects and ideas, as well as communicate with each other using our mailing lists for discussion and development, and our #LibrePlanet IRC channel on Freenode.

LibrePlanet is about spreading the free software ideals, organizing activists and supporters of the free software philosophy, as well as about organizing GNU/Linux, or other technology-specific user groups. The site can be used for a broad range of uses, by expert software developers and budding community activists alike. A few random examples will illustrate the diverse landscape and possibilities:

• You can find other free software enthusiasts in your area so that you can discuss free software subjects, and stay updated on the latest events and developments within the free software community. Many groups are already active here, and they welcome you to join. You can also start your own group!

• On the page Hardware/research/e-readers, you can find a discussion of which existing ebook readers could become RYF certified without too much work.

• You can follow the FSF tech team's work to deploy a Web-based collaborative software platform ("forge") for fully free software projects.

• If you are a GNU contributor or maintainer interested in meeting up with people in your area to sign GPG keys and strengthen the Web of Trust, please add your info to the GNU/Keysigning/Offers page.

• You can learn more about free software and how to make money as a libre software programmer, or add your own knowledge and experience as a page to the wiki as a resource for beginners.

• And there is always the Random button in the main menu, which can take you places you had never imagined.

With the help of our recent campaigns intern Valessio Brito, we have now updated the theme of libreplanet.org in order to facilitate ease of use. We are asking for your help to maintain these pages, and to make it as accessible and up to date as possible. Things that anyone can help us with:

• Editing: Edits are an important part of keeping the LibrePlanet site up to date. Any contributions or changes are welcome! All you need to do is to log in with your existing FSF account, or create one at cas.fsf.org.You don't need additional permissions for this: go ahead and start.

• Translations: We want to reach free software enthusiasts all over the globe, so all of our pages would benefit immensely from translation. For more information, see the translation page.

• Restructuring: Along with the new theme, we are proposing a new structure to go with it. This means that some pages will need to be archived, updated, or moved. By working on structure, you can help to increase the user-friendliness of the site. Our wiki makes use of the Semantic MediaWiki extension, which helps in building a comprehensive knowledge base for free software topics.

We are inviting you to help us create an even better resource for free software activists all over this (Libre!)Planet. You can get started now, or connect to us through any of our discussion channels. If you would like to discuss your ideas before you start, you can ask your questions using the discussion mailing list, or for technical questions, contact the developers mailing list. We look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for being part of our network!

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) keeps a close eye on the headlines for threats to user freedom coming from many different fronts, such as the way Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) impedes an individual's right to control their computers and devices. The Defective by Design campaign is a place for us to transform our digital dissent into in-person actions, canvassing, and effective protests. We couldn't do work like this without your support, which is why we're asking you to join our associate membership program.

Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) stepped up its game in 2019 when it comes to oppressing users. The hydra of streaming media conglomerates gained an ugly new head in the form of Disney+, and Pearson's latest attempt to restrict access to their textbooks reminded us that even education can't escape digital handcuffs. Over the years it's crept into our coffee, spied on our habits, and may one day threaten toast, but the fight's not over yet.

As every aspect of our lives goes digital, there's no part of our lifestyle that is safe from DRM. This gives us one of two choices. Either we can go the analog route and stop trying to access the media we care about in order to retain our freedom, or we can eliminate DRM altogether. Looking back on 2019 and the thirteen-year history of the Defective by Design campaign, we're confident that the best option is the latter one.

Our goal may be ambitious, but it's not impossible to achieve. The passion we've seen from anti-DRM activists over the years has driven one point home: the only thing standing between us and our objective is the billions of dollars corporations spend to try and persuade us to trade freedom for convenience. But as every underdog story shows, it's passion and not profit that wins in the end. For instance, due to a large public outcry, Disney has begrudgingly lowered the DRM level of its new streaming service. Yet we won't rest until it's gone for good.

We spent this year on the frontlines in the fight against DRM. Sometimes this was easier than at other times: the weather in Boston for our International Day Against DRM (IDAD) wasn't quite as cold as it was when we campaigned against Disney outside of local theaters on the premiere of Frozen II. Just before moviegoers huddled inside the theater, we were there to pass out fliers and start conversations on the dangers of Disney+.

At the same time, we were invigorated by the support we've seen from both individuals and organizations around the globe; at the time of this writing, we're expecting to receive a shipment of 2,000 stickers from an anti-DRM activist with a printing press. No matter how large or small they are, these gestures of fiscal support add up to make an enormous impact on our work.

Just as DRM infects many different areas of our digital lives, the Defective by Design campaign spans multiple forms of media. In addition to drawing the support of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, FSF Europe, and 11 other partner organizations in the International Day Against DRM, we made a shareable book dust jacket in nine different languages that activists around the world have used to inform others of the grave threat ebook DRM poses to our cultural legacy.

As steadfast as we are, the FAANGs of the hydra are getting even sharper. DRM may have started out as a seemingly benign way for record labels to make an extra buck at the expense of their listeners' freedom, but like every bacteria, it began to take increasingly sickening shapes and forms. Streaming services are growing more popular by the day, and the companies behind them are developing ever more insidious ways to restrict and spy on the people who purchase their products.

The commitment of our community fuels our own. It's your feedback that helps us update the Guide to DRM-free Living, your financial giving that keeps our lights on, and your dedication to a world without DRM that inspires our passion against all odds. Together we can push the fight against DRM forward, and design a future that isn't defective.

Photo by Greg Farough Copyright © 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc., licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

The Free Software Foundation’s (FSF) licensing and compliance team is the guardian of the GNU General Public License (GPL), which has brought software freedom to the world for over three decades. As stewards of the GPL and the rest of the GNU family of licenses, we must continue our work to protect and extend computer user freedom, but we need your help.

We launched our annual fundraiser with the goal of welcoming 600 new associate members before December 31st. New members are critical to the cause, and by becoming a member you will stand in solidarity with others who care about computer user freedom. As is the case with any social movement, the numbers matter, and it is a very powerful gesture to make for only $10 a month ($5 if you are a student). Please support the work that gives hope for a future with software freedom: make a donation or – better yet -- join us and become a member today.

The Free Software Foundation is a global leader for copyleft, and the licensing team plays a vital role in disseminating useful knowledge about free software while working to protect it. We accomplish this in part by answering licensing questions from the public and by providing resources like our list of free software licenses. We also increase access to software freedom by managing the Respects Your Freedom certification program, and cataloging free software through our endorsed distributions program and the Free Software Directory. To protect free software, we handle license compliance for the GNU Project, resulting in a stronger community and more respect for the power of copyleft.

We are proud to accomplish this as just two staff working with our executive director, board, and legal counsel. These resources combined make a potent force for software freedom, and your support will ensure our work continues with the aim to do an even better job in 2020. Let us share a bit about the work we did in 2019 and elaborate on why it is so vital that this work continues.

Helping users, developers, and distributors to understand licensing

The FSF, as a recognized authority on free software licensing, along with our team of three volunteers, answered almost 600 licensing questions from all over the world in 2019. The questions can range from the very simple (“Can I sell free software?” Yes, you can!) to the much more complex nuances of free software licensing. Some people write to us trying to understand both established GNU licenses and licenses created by other organizations.

The software licensing landscape is constantly changing, as some projects choose to draft new licenses. We periodically provide updates to our licensing materials to help keep everyone informed and connected to best practices. Even for licenses on which we’ve publicly commented, there can still be questions about what they mean, or how they can interact with one another. In addition to fielding questions directly, we provide resources like our GPL FAQ, with over 170 entries on the GPL and other important free software topics. We also maintain our list of software licenses, with our determinations as to whether each license is free or nonfree.

Software licensing seminars

In October, we hosted a Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminar on GPL enforcement and legal ethics, and we plan to do another one in 2020. The subject matter is geared towards lawyers, law professionals and students, but is open to and attended by non-law professionals as well. The 2019 edition of our seminar covered the basics of the GPL, court cases that shaped the free software licensing world, ethical considerations important to lawyers working with clients involved in free software, trademarks, and the current spate of license proliferation. These seminars are great for anyone seeking discussion and information about software licensing, and for those attorneys who are seeking CLE credits. The lectures are given by experts and leaders in the field, people at the forefront of advancing copyleft licensing. In 2020, we plan to host yet another CLE, and with your help, we will keep expanding these seminars and increase their frequency in the years to come.

Identifying and supporting fully free GNU/Linux distributions

Through our list of free GNU/Linux distributions, users can find a complete operating system that contains and recommends only free software. We work with maintainers, we help them remove nonfree software, and we point out other potential issues with the distribution. During last year's fundraiser we were excited to announce the latest addition to the list, Hyperbola GNU/Linux-Libre. Although we saw the retirement of Musix in 2019, the list still includes a fair number of choices, with nine standard distros and two small GNU/Linux distros meant for limited devices, but clearly we want to keep providing more options for users when it comes to fully free distributions. Your help will allow us to do just that as we strive for a world where GNU/Linux distributions fully guarantee user freedom, rather than risking becoming platforms using free components just to more efficiently deliver proprietary applications or forcing users into Service as a Software Substitute.

Helping users find freedom-respecting devices

Being able to purchase hardware that only comes with free software takes effort, which is where our Respects Your Freedom certification program comes in. As the only organization doing this unique type of certification, we certified eighteen devices in 2019, with fourteen from ThinkPenguin, two from Vikings GmbH, and two from Raptor Computing Systems.

In a world rife with digital products that disrespect the user, this program is critical. We're seeing an increasing number of people demanding more freedom when it comes to their devices. For this reason, we gave our RYF Web page a major overhaul, transforming it from a single chronological listing of certifications to a standalone site. Not only does it have a sleek modern look and mobile device compatibility, but it is also a robust database for browsing by product type and by vendor. This functionality not only makes products easier to find, but its design will also handle the expected growth in the number of certified devices.

Picture it: a world where people can go into a store or online and easily buy products, without being expert technologists or licensing gurus, that purvey respect along with their technical usefulness! We see this future over the horizon, and with your help, we can exceed our expectations to process (and hopefully approve) more devices for certification in 2020 and beyond.

Helping everyone ethically share free software

When all of our educational resources aren't enough, and someone fails to provide the rights guaranteed under a free license like the GPL, the licensing team takes special care to teach them how to better their ways and find a place in the community. Where necessary, we uphold free software by enforcing the license according to the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement, which we co-developed with the Software Freedom Conservancy. Our goal is to educate and guide these distributors into compliance, but we stand firm in our belief that legal action is sometimes necessary to protect user rights.

Helping users find free software

The licensing team maintains the Free Software Directory, a massive listing of over 16,000 freely-licensed packages, which had over 800,000 unique visits in 2019. This is a resource for users to find free software. It also helps maintainers of free software packages discover potential licensing issues with their code, and because it provides exportable data sets, the Directory's usefulness expands to academic researchers as well. You are welcome to join us and other volunteers every Friday via IRC (freenode, #fsf @ 12:00-15:00 EST) to review free software packages for inclusion in the Directory. If there's an issue, we file a bug with the project about the licensing problem. The Directory is a wiki that anyone can edit, and we always welcome more volunteers to participate. In 2019, we brought in quite a few new volunteers, who took on projects to more systematically update and curate entries, and even to improve the functioning of the Directory itself. But while 16,000 free software packages may seem like a lot, there is an entire world of free software beyond the Directory that still needs the sort of licensing review that we provide as part of the process of adding a package to the Directory.

Help us advocate for copyleft!

Besides answering emails and publishing articles, the licensing team also gives talks at conferences and staffs FSF booths at conferences such as CopyleftConf, LinuxFest Northwest, and FOSDEM. We are getting the word out about software freedom! But to continue this work, and do even more in the year to come, we need your support. We hope you'll take this opportunity to help us in this mission in the year ahead.