### More than licenses:
how we get software right-to-repair and healthy communities

Denver Gingerich

CSC 590, Creighton University

Monday 31 March 2025

https://ossguy.com/talks/20250331_csc590/

## introduction

Director of Compliance, SFC

Founder, JMP(.chat)

## Software Freedom Conservancy

non-profit charity

home for FOSS projects, copyleft advocacy

### Wine

### https://pad.sfconservancy.org/

## JMP(.chat)

for-profit worker co-operative

all software under AGPLv3

## what is copyleft? why use it?

right to repair (= right to modify)

good for business (competition, trust)

good for advocacy (better for user, society)

## what rights must you receive, and give?

derivative work obligations - yes, but...

gives you rights even if company doesn't "modify"

"you must give the recipients all the rights that we gave you"

## how does copyleft work?

AVM - took a while, but now we know

"the scripts used to control compilation and installation"

examples (good and bad) on Use The Source

## what does this give us?

actual, practical ownership of your devices

crucial for longevity - lots of examples

SFC knows where we are at is not good enough

we want more! (and we work hard to get it!)

## you can run a good business on copyleft

shipped in hardware, subscription, libre non-gratis

build a society where the currency is not privacy invasion

## healthy open source projects

use copyleft licenses - encourages contribution

diverse copyrights, no CLA (Producing OSS on this)

critical mass is intrinsically motivated

contributors use it themselves (see also ^)

home is a non-profit charity (ideal)

## ways to promote open source

get involved, consider NPO support/work

push back on no copyleft (no Linux, really?)

watch for how to help the business (queue Linksys)

keep your copyrights

Use The Source

### https://sfconservancy.org/usethesource/

### https://sfconservancy.org/usethesource/offer/

## current events

AVM, Vizio

OpenWrt One

AI/LLMs, OSI, DMCA

SBOMs, Heartbleed, Log4Shell

more...

### Thanks!

https://ossguy.com/talks/20250331_csc590/

book a time to chat ->

or email: denver@sfconservancy.org

Some included images are ©’ed by others. I believe my use of those images is fair use under USA © law.

Presentation and slides are: Copyright © 2023-2025 Denver Gingerich, and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Slide Source available.