Plaintext
Stand Up for the GNU GPL!
Karen M. Sandler
LibrePlanet 2015
March 22, 2015
About me...
● Executive Director, Conservancy
● Board of Directors, GNOME Foundation
● Pro bono counsel, FSF, GNOME, QCO...
● Co-organizer, Outreachy
● Cyborg
● I ♥ LibrePlanet
@o0karen0o @conservancy
About me...
● Executive Director, Conservancy
● Board of Directors, GNOME Foundation
● Pro bono counsel, FSF, GNOME, QCO...
● Co-organizer, Outreachy
● Cyborg
● I ♥ LibrePlanet
@o0karen0o @conservancy
Newcomer?
Standing up for the GNU GPL
We get passionate requests for
enforcement.
Supercomputers
Android phones
TVs
Cars
International Space Station
Google Facebook Twitter Amazon
Copyleft is good for everyone in
the long run.
How much is saved on software
and how many months are
products faster to market?
Free software is everywhere and
yet our freedoms are being
constantly eroded.
Once upon a time...
(aka October 2011)
● $36 billion market cap
● net revenue of over
$1 billion
● Over 14,000
employees
In 2014, VMware finally said they
would not comply with the GPL.
This is Christoph Hellwig
● 279,653 lines of code
in the kernel
● 20th of 1,340 in 3.19
● 4th among reviewers
of third party code
VMware asked for an NDA just
to look at the settlement offer!
We were left with no choice
but to sue.
This is the first case on
derivative works.
#VMwareDTRT
“The point of the GPL is that nobody can
claim those rights and then kick away
the ladder to prevent others from also
receiving them. We hope VMware will
step up and do the right thing,"
-- John Sullivan, FSF's executive director.
“They should read our open
source 101 materials!”
Enforcing the GPL is very political
We are a small organization
...with a lot of other important
work to do.
We need your help
We don't want to litigate,
we just want compliance.
This is a long road.
You have a lot of power in this fight.
Stand up for the GNU GPL!
Thank you
● Software Freedom Conservancy is a 501(c)(3)
charity in the USA – make a donation!
sfconservancy.org/donate/
● These slides, this talk, and audio/video
recordings thereof (except for photos by others)
are licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
(CC BY-SA 4.0)