2024 has been a jam packed year at Software Freedom Conservancy; from the new copyleft compliance efforts, continued community building at Outreachy and new venues of outreach and advocacy in the software right to repair world. There is growing interest in why software freedom is important for us all, and as we learn from and work with all of you about how to affect the change needed, we strive for making the world a more technologically inclusive and human centered place.

Outreachy accepted 58 interns in the December 2023 cohort, and 35 interns in the May 2024 cohort with over 30 Free and Open Source software communities. Bringing in new communities in the Open Science and Humanitarian spheres, Outreachy continues to lead the way in providing opportunities to people subject to systemic bias and impacted by underrepresentation in technology. Last year celebrated our 1000th intern (!!!), and we've continued to provide these critical opportunities to people who need them most.

Since last year at this time, we spent over $1.4 million that we raised, administered and/or facilitated to improve software freedom directly! This includes contractors, interns and students, administrators, and grants for creation, distribution and maintenance of free software projects. Part of the unique position of our organization is the expertise necessary to do this kind of work.

Among our many avenues for making change, SFC works with our projects to host conferences, release hardware (which will be generally available by the end of the year) and continue providing important hosting and infrastructure services to the free software world. Our member projects provide ways to assert our freedom over our technology and pursue important work in expanding the ways that we make free software available for everyone. Through liberating firmware, educational software, creating freedom respecting content hosting software, and leading development in supply chain security.

OSUOSL alumni panel with director Lance Albertson

CC BY-SA 4.0 Samhir Vasdev

This year we hosted the second annual FOSSY in Portland, Oregon. Over 15 tracks and speakers from over 10 countries, our event continues to grow and expand. Help us build the next big North American free software event by submitting track ideas or joining our XMPP room. Next year we'll be having it again July 31st - August 3rd, so mark your calendars!

All year long, we've worked tirelessly on our monumental and ground-breaking software Right to Repair litigation, which will establish a third-party right to enforce copyleft licenses (such as the GPL and LGPL). During our fundraiser this year, we'll release various interesting items from this litigation against Vizio — so those of you who are litigation geeks will have interesting reading this season!

In this years DMCA triennial we once again won exemptions for all four of the categories that we applied for! Thanks to our Director of Compliance, Denver Gingerich for providing live expert testimony to the Library of Congress in the hearing.

• Computer programs for purposes of good-faith security research
• "jailbreaking" smart TVs
• "jailbreaking" routers
• Literary works consisting of compilations of data generated by medical devices or their personal corresponding monitoring systems, to access personal data

These allow people access (that should be granted in the first place!) to investigate their own devices for issues of license compliance, security,and replacing the firmware on their TVs and routers. It's a key ability to vet and replace software on devices we own and operate, so renewing this exemption each time it comes up is very important for us all. The medical device exemption was signed by our Executive Director Karen Sandler, on behalf of a group of medical device researchers who are personally affected by proprietary medical technology.

As software based technology becomes more pervasive in our lives, it's vital that we communicate the importance of software freedom to the wider population. We have a video(narrated by our Executive Director Karen Sandler) that introduces the ideas of software freedom, and specifically what Software Freedom Conservancy does. Continuing to advocate against corporate controlled software, we'd also like to remind you that as a Sustainer, we will provide you with your own BigBlueButton account so that you can host your own video calls on a FOSS platform. Once you have donated to us, you can fill our the new account signup and your account will be approved.

This year our staff attended and spoke at many conferences, including keynoting FOSDEM!, speaking to both current issues by hosting a panel discussion at FOSDEM and speaking about the 25 year history of copyleft compliance. You probably also saw us at OSSEU, SCaLE, LLW and many more. Our Executive Director Karen Sandler spoke at NAVA Open Source Summit: Advancing IT Solutions in Federal Health and Beyond, Apereo microconf, participating in the UN OSPOs for Good event being a content partner at What's Next 4 OSS, as well as other diversity and public health events. As we move into a new era of computing, we also want to make sure that our values are present in discussions of emerging technologies, that's why we released our aspirational statement on generative AI. SFC's advocacy for software freedom and digital rights is widening and spreading to more regional policy; our Director of Compliance recently spoke at CanRepair, the Canadian Repair Convention. Coalition building and community hosting is something we take so much pride in, and by hosting FOSSY our own community focused conference. Hosting tracks, keynotes and giving talks, our staff was so excited to be back in Portland to celebrate software freedom with our attendees. We want to hear from you about what kind of tracks, talks and events you'd like to participate in. As we continue to ramp back into more face to face events, we're so excited for safe and inclusive events; you just can't beat being in community!

As a fiscal host, our member projects are all our children and it's hard to pick a favorite :) Here are some highlights from the incredible member projects (members as we consider our relationship collaborative). Ranging from education software, to content management systems, copyright aggregation, free firmware and open compatibility software, SFC is home to an amazing gamut of incredibly important infrastructural and user facing free software projects.

The Institute for Computing in Research completed it's sixth year, providing training, education and real world software experience to high school students in 3 cities and exploring additional cities that may join next summer. These research internships are a great and unique way for high school students to get involved in real academic research while also being exposed to the ideas and principles of software freedom.

Picture of OpenWrt One PCB showing Software Freedom Conservancy logo and offer for source CC-BY-SA 4.0 Denver Gingerich

OpenWrt replaced their package manager OPKG with Alpine Linux's apk and with support from SFC, launched their first official hardware project called the OpenWrt One (which will be generally available by the end of the year)! Being both reference hardware for the project as well as a shining example of providing making the Complete Corresponding Source available. We're so excited for the OpenWrt team for making this happen and increasing the amount of open source first products in the world.

qemu hosted KVM Forum in Brno this year. Featuring talks from over 50 speakers which you can view on the conference website. qemu remains a hallmark project that is the industry standard for emulation and virtualization, on which so much of our technology relies.

git participated in GSoC with three students and hosted their Git Merge conference in Berlin this fall. Coming up on their 20th year, the project stands as a standard for free software development and just as importantly, using free software to develop itself.

Inkscape had their huge 1.4 release! A landmark project that celebrated their 21st year in 2024. Inkscape is looking toward a bright future with plenty of community support and a growing user base.

Reproducible Builds continued their incredible work with The Sovereign Tech Fund to lead by example the practicality and importance of supply chain security. Giving talks in over 5 countries, influencing academic papers, and hosting their annual summit, it's been an incredibly busy year for the team!