In August of 2012, the Licensing & Compliance Lab kicked off a series of interviews with developers of free software. These interviews were a chance to highlight cool free software projects, especially those using copyleft licenses, and learn more about why they are dedicated to free software. What started as a single interview has grown into a regular feature of the Licensing & Compliance Lab blog. With 2015 in the rear-view mirror, we take a moment to look back on the series and highlight these great projects once again.

All of the packages featured here are licensed under either the GNU GPL or AGPL. Each interview looks into the history of the package to understand why it was created and why a copyleft license was chosen.

Michael Lissner and Brian Carver of RECAP The Law 2015-10-30

RECAP is a suite of browser extensions that improves the experience of using PACER, the electronic public access system for the U.S. Federal Courts. When you pay for documents on PACER, RECAP helps you give back by contributing those documents to a public archive hosted by the Internet Archive. RECAP also saves you money when you use PACER by showing you when documents are available at no cost from the Archive. If you use PACER you should install RECAP to save money and contribute to the public archive. Michael Lissner is a developer and Brian Carver is an attorney; both are members of Free Law Project's Board of Directors.

Read the full interview here.

Joël Krähemann, maintainer of Advanced GTK+ Sequencer 2015-7-8

In this edition, we conducted an IRC-based interview with Joël Krähemann, Maintainer of Advanced GTK+ Sequencer. Joël is an IT professional in Switzerland and works on music for fun. Advanced GTK+ Sequencer (AGS) is a an audio processing and composition tool.

Read the full interview here.

François Marier of Libravatar 2015-6-1

In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with François Marier, a free software developer from New Zealand. He is the lead developer of Libravatar. In addition to his passion for decentralization, he contributes to the Debian GNU/Linux project and volunteers on the FSF licensing team. Libravatar is a free network service providing profile photos for a number of Web sites, including bugs.debian.org and git.kernel.org. Its flexible architecture allows end users to host their own images and allows Web sites to use Gravatar as a fallback when necessary. It is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, or end users can opt for any later version (GNU AGPLv3+).

Read the full interview here.

Matt Lee from The List powered by Creative Commons 2015-4-16

We conducted an email-based interview with Matt Lee, a lead developer of The List, which is licensed under the AGPLv3, or at your option, any later version. Matt is the technical lead at Creative Commons. Matt has been working in free software for over a decade and is a notable contributor to the GNU Project, a former campaigns manager at the Free Software Foundation, and co-founder of Libre.fm and GNU social. Currently Matt is producing a film, Orang-U: An Ape Goes to College, which he is editing using entirely free software and will release under a CC BY-SA license.

Read the full interview here.

Rainey Reitman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation 2015-2-11

We conducted an email-based interview with Rainey Reitman, Activism Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, about their new EFF Alerts mobile app.

Read the full interview here.

Aaron Wolf of Snowdrift.coop 2014-12-29

Aaron Wolf is the co-founder of Snowdrift.coop, a web platform coordinating patronage specifically for freely-licensed works. Aaron Wolf is a music teacher by trade who got involved in the free software movement in 2012 building on his earlier interest in free culture and cooperative economics.

Read the full interview here.

Jessica Tallon of PyPump 2014-10-30

In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Jessica Tallon, the lead developer PyPump, a simple but powerful and pythonic way of interfacing with the pump.io API, which is licensed under the terms of the GPLv3 or, at your option, any later version.

Read the full interview here.

Alan Reiner of Bitcoin Armory 2014-9-26

Alan Reiner is a core developer of Bitcoin Armory, a bitcoin wallet focused on security. Bitcoin Armory is licensed under the terms of AGPLv3, or (at your option) any later version.

Read the full interview here.

Stephen H. Dawson of GNU remotecontrol 2014-9-5

We conducted an email-based interview with Stephen H. Dawson and the rest of the GNU remotecontrol project, a web application for managing building automation devices. Stephen is the maintainer of the GNU remotecontrol software project and is an Information Technology Management professional with over twenty-five years of industry experience in various areas of application development, database management, and networking.

Read the full interview here.

David Lohle of Tox 2015-7-21

In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with David Lohle from the Tox project, an all-in-one communication platform and protocol that ensures users full privacy and secure message delivery. The Tox core library is licensed under the terms of GPLv3, or (at your option) any later version. The library implements the Tox protocol and provides an API for clients, such as Venom and Toxic.

Read the full interview here.

Ciaran Gultnieks of F-Droid 2014-5-8

Ciaran Gultnieks is the founder of F-Droid project and the lead developer of fdroidserver, which is licensed under the AGPLv3 (or any later version).

The main function of the fdroidserver is to provide the back-end tools for managing a repository of applications — building them from source (very important) in a secure environment, indexing them, signing them, and providing the mechanisms for delivering this data to the end user.

Read the full interview here.

Roman Telezhinsky of Valentina 2014-3-19

In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Roman Telezhinsky, the lead developer of Valentina, a free software pattern-making program, which is licensed under the GPLv3 (or any later version).

Read the full interview here.

Joerg Henrichs of SuperTuxKart 2014-1-30

We conducted an email-based interview with Joerg Henrichs, the lead developer of SuperTuxKart, a free software 3D kart racing game, which is licensed under the GPLv3 (or any later version).

Read the full interview here.

Frank Karlitschek of ownCloud 2013-12-20

In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Frank Karlitschek, the lead developer of ownCloud, a server software project that provides universal access to your files via the Web, your computer, or your mobile devices — wherever you are. It also provides a platform to easily view and sync your contacts, calendars, and bookmarks across all your devices and enables basic editing right on the Web. It is licensed under the AGPLv3, or at your option, any later version. (A note on framing: While we believe that "cloud computing" is a vacuous term that should be avoided, we still greatly appreciate the ownCloud project and its aims, even if we might have chosen a different name for the software.)

Read the full interview here.

Andrew Ziem of BleachBit 2013-10-29

Andrew Ziem is the lead developer of BleachBit -- free software designed to help you free disk space and guard your privacy.

Read the full interview here.

Caleb James DeLisle of cjdns 2014-9-25

In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Caleb James DeLisle, the lead developer of cjdns, an encrypted IPv6 networking protocol and server software that uses public key cryptography for address allocation and a distributed hash table for routing.

Read the full interview here.

Bernd Kreuss of TorChat 2013-8-26

In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Bernd Kreuss, the developer of TorChat, a peer-to-peer instant messenger with a completely decentralized design.

Read the full interview here.

Shiv Shankar Dayal of Kunjika 2013-7-19

In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Shiv Shankar Dayal, the developer of Kunjika, an extensible web-based Q&A system.

Read the full interview here.

Adam Hyde of Booktype 2013-3-21

We interviewed Adam Hyde via email. Adam is a knowledge production consultant. He is the founder of Booktype -- a book production platform released under AGPLv3, as well as Book Sprints, and FLOSS Manuals. Adam lives between Whangarei Heads, New Zealand, Berlin, and the road.

Read the full interview here.

Matthieu Aubry of Piwik 2013-1-22

In this installment, we interviewed (via email) Matthieu Aubry, the maintainer of Piwik, a freely licensed web analytics package. The FSF encourages people to use Piwik as a replacement for Google Analytics, since Google Analytics requires nonfree JavaScript to run in visitors' browsers, and to be careful with Piwik's privacy settings to make sure that visitor IP addresses and other identifiable bits of information are not recorded.

Read the full interview here.

Kovid Goyal of Calibre 2012-12-13

Calibre is a free ebook library management application developed by users of ebooks for users of ebooks. Calibre is a vibrant community with half-a-dozen developers and many, many testers and bug reporters. It is used in over 200 countries and has been translated into a dozen different languages by volunteers. Calibre has become a comprehensive tool for the management of digital texts, allowing you to do whatever you could possibly imagine with your ebook library. In this installment, we interviewed Kovid Goyal, the creator and lead developer of calibre, via email.

Read the full interview here.

Jeremy Allison on why Samba switched to GPLv3 2012-10-30

Jeremy Allison is a long-time free software advocate and a lead developer of Samba. He has given a talk on why Samba chose the GPLv3 on several occasions, and we wanted to highlight that talk again as part of our series.

Read the full interview here.

John W. Eaton of GNU Octave 2012-8-31

GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides capabilities for the numerical solution of linear and nonlinear problems, and for performing other numerical experiments. It also provides extensive graphics capabilities for data visualization and manipulation. Octave is normally used through its interactive command line interface, but it can also be used to write non-interactive programs. The Octave language is quite similar to Matlab so that most programs are easily portable.

One of the goals of the Octave project is to liberate the code written for the proprietary program, Matlab, and allow it to run in Octave with as little modification as possible. We interviewed John W. Eaton of the GNU Octave project.

Read the full interview here.

The U.S. Department of Education posted a Notice of Proposed Rule Making earlier this fall, Open Licensing Requirement for Direct Grant Programs, requesting comments from the public. While the Department's use of the watered-down term 'open' is unfortunate, the goals expressed in that notice are something that free software activists can be pleased with. The Department was looking to provide greater access to and distribution of works created using the grant funding it awards. In order to bring this about, it proposed new regulations requiring that all grant-funded works be released under a license that permits the public and educators to use them freely.

There was just one small hitch; the new regulations didn't explicitly require that the license permit redistribution of modified versions. Without this condition, users could create modified versions, but might not be able to then share those modified versions with others who could benefit. The ability to share modified versions is important not just to add value to the materials; it is also necessary to respect the rights of computer users. If this condition were missing, then grant-funded works could potentially be released under a license that failed to guarantee all of the four freedoms required for a work to be considered free software.

So we asked free software activists to help us let the Department know about the issue, requesting that you send us comments of your own or to co-sign the comment we were submitting for the FSF. People from all over the U.S. (and even some from around the world) responded by sending in thoughtful comments and requests to join our statement. We have now mailed those comments to the Department, and are hopeful that they will aid in making sure the new regulations accomplish the goals set out for them.

We also sent a letter with our submission explaining why we had to print and physically mail these comments. The only way to submit comments electronically is to use the government's Regulations.gov portal, which is encumbered by proprietary JavaScript. Users shouldn't have to choose between permitting non-free software on their computers and being able to communicate with their government. Governments should promote the use of free software, not impede it. While the Department doesn't control the portal (many agencies use it), we wanted to put the issue on their radar -- especially since requiring proprietary JavaScript is inconsistent with the very principles their proposed regulations seek to advance.

We are hopeful that the Department will respond to our comments, and make the small correction that is necessary to prevent the proposal from being a near-miss. We will keep you updated on progress. Thank you to everyone who shared their comments with us, and to everyone who helped bring this proposal to fruition!

Didn't get a chance to join in on the effort? Here's what you can still do to help:

• Read and share our comment as well as our letter to the Department of Education.
• Support our work on education by donating to the FSF.

Last year, I joined the Software Freedom Conservancy as one of their first Supporters, doing my small part to bolster their then-new grassroots fundraising program. Today, after reading up on the fantastic results they've achieved over the last year, I'm renewing my support. I hope you will join me this giving season in supporting both the FSF and Conservancy.

Bradley Kuhn, Conservancy's President, hired me to work at the Free Software Foundation in March of 2003, when he was the FSF's executive director. Bradley had just, at the end of 2002, led the effort to design and launch our associate membership program. He did this to get the FSF, which was faltering, back on stable financial footing. Thirteen years later, you can see the success of his efforts. The FSF has not only remained solid -- we've even grown. By donating to Conservancy now, you can help them reach the same level of stability.

Every day, I am thankful for the work Bradley did in 2002 and the result that the FSF is almost 85% funded by individuals. While we receive and welcome support from corporations as well, the fact that we do so from a position of grassroots strength and independence helps us stick resolutely to our principles and the clear-eyed pursuit of our charitable mission to make all software respect the freedom of the people using it.

The best way in our current legal regime to make this dream a reality is to distribute software under the terms of a copyleft license like the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GNU GPL guarantees that software initially distributed under its terms will always be free for anyone to run, share, modify, and re-share. Software bearing its shield can never be incorporated into proprietary, restricted products like those distributed by Microsoft, Apple, Google, and -- sadly -- many others.

This protection, though, is not automatic. The terms of the GPL need to be actively enforced whenever companies attempt to take works written and distributed by developers committed to respecting users, and instead use those works as the basis for restriction and control. Such companies are doing something unethical. They are taking software deliberately committed to the commons for everyone to build on in their own endeavors, whether commercial or noncommercial, and instead using that work to try and get a cheater's advantage over their business competitors.

The GPL is more than capable of stopping this cheating. But someone has to detect it, and someone has to take action to stop it. We describe this work as "GPL enforcement" or "GPL compliance." The software copyright holders or their designated representative are the ones who have the legal standing to tell the cheaters that they have to stop cheating, and to take them to court if they refuse. The FSF, standing up for the developers of GNU software, and as a proxy for users everywhere, does this work daily. So does Conservancy, on behalf of its member projects and other developers they have specific agreements with. These projects include a few you might have heard of, like Git, Samba, Mercurial, and the GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers.

Even though we have decades of evidence that following the terms of the GPL can lead to enormous business success, some bad actors still cheat and take shortcuts. They build their products using the ladder handed to them by free software developers, and then try to kick it away so no one else can do the same.

Organizations like the FSF and Conservancy, working with like-minded free software developers, take on the often David vs. Goliath work of investigating and stopping such cheating. Because this work involves using the power of problematic legal systems, we both follow a set of principles designed to make sure we do it for only the right reasons and never for mere financial gain.

Fortunately, the problem of deliberate cheating is less common than companies who distribute both GPL and non-GPL software unintentionally screwing up. Even though GPL-licensed software is now the backbone of our international economy, distributing it is still new to many companies. Conservancy and the FSF help such companies find and correct their mistakes and start to do things the right way. We do ask to be reimbursed for our time on such work, but at very modest rates that by themselves never seem sufficient to expand it -- largely because both organizations also devote much of our time to helping free software developers use licenses properly, at no charge.

While, as the FSF's executive director, I am primarily concerned about growing our own work in this area, it is also abundantly clear that we need more than one organization doing it. If we don't, all the amazing work done over the last two-and-a-half decades developing and sharing software under the GPL will end up having been in service of making cheaper and easier ways to restrict and control people, instead of building the digital foundation for a truly free society. As Conservancy's executive director and unflappable advocate of user freedom Karen Sandler said in her 2015 LibrePlanet keynote, someone needs to "stand up for the GPL."

The GPL works. It has been tested in courts. It has established and maintained strong norms outside of court. But like the Millennium Falcon's deflector shields, if you don't keep it charged and angled at the threats, you'll be vulnerable.

Unfortunately, some companies see the very success of free software as evidence that we should stop doing GPL enforcement and stop worrying about whether they are actually passing along the freedoms the GPL gave them. This is short-term thinking on their part, undermining the very principles and dynamics that made their businesses possible.

They are testing the waters to see how much you, as an individual, care about having your freedom respected. There are many ways each of us can stand up for our own freedom, but in practice, as each of us have day jobs, families, and complex lives, the best option we have is to join our resources with others', and support groups whose day job is to work on our behalf.

To that end, Bradley Kuhn and Karen Sandler are two of the hardest working people I know. For them, it's much more than a day job. Together with their General Counsel Tony Sebro, their License Compliance Engineer Denver Gingerich, and their all-star board of directors, they get an astounding amount of work done, for astoundingly modest compensation. They do it for all the right reasons, and are incorruptible. As someone who has worked closely with 13 years' of FSF staffers and board members, and hundreds of free software developers and activists, my expectations in this area are very high. These are exactly the kind of people you want working on your behalf.

What they get done -- behind the scenes doing critical administrative work so developers can focus on development; out on the international speaking circuit inspiring people and focusing attention on key issues facing our movement; and on the phone successfully navigating delicate, difficult negotiations -- is a constant inspiration to me and should make you, as a Supporter, feel very good about how your donations are used.

This is a key moment to stand up for yourselves, to give back for work that's already been done, and to ensure the continued growth of free software as a means to ensure our freedom, and the freedom of future generations. Fortunately, since we have the strength of numbers to draw on, you can do your part for both organizations for less than the monthly cost of a couple Netflix subscriptions or a single dinner out. And if you do it now for Conservancy, your donation will be matched.

The alternative -- of being surrounded by computers of all shapes and sizes controlled by others for the purpose of influencing, monitoring, and restricting every aspect of our lives, will be far more costly.

If you haven't yet, register now to attend LibrePlanet, and consider helping build our travel scholarship fund, to help a fellow free software enthusiast attend.

Each year, free software fans from across the world gather for the LibrePlanet conference. At this year's LibrePlanet, our theme, "Fork the System", will explore how free software creates the opportunity of a new path for its users, allows developers to fight the restrictions of a system dominated by a proprietary software by creating free software replacements, and is the foundation of freedom, sharing, and change.

Fitting the theme, each year we offer a few scholarships to LibrePlanet participants for whom the cost of travel is a major barrier to attendance. We strive for inclusiveness in the free software community, and we know the scholarship fund is one way of creating opportunity in the free software community.

The FSF is seen as a guiding light for the free software community. Can you increase access to LibrePlanet 2016, helping more community members shine, by giving to our scholarship fund?

The impact of scholarships is huge: the free software community benefits when new people are able to attend LibrePlanet. Those who are awarded travel scholarships bring their own ideas to the conference and commit to sharing what they learn at LibrePlanet with their local community.

A donation of $100 will fund one night in a shared hotel room. A donation of $400 will fund one domestic flight. A donation of $1,200 will fund an international flight.

In 2015, the Free Software Foundation spent $4,500 to bring four people to LibrePlanet. This year, we have thirty-three applicants from fifteen countries who would like to attend LibrePlanet but need financial assistance. The number of applicants we'll be able to offer scholarships depends, in part, on the donation you make between now and December 31st.

Will you help us? You can make a donation or donate when you register for the conference yourself. Every donation you make also helps us meet our goal of raising $450,000 by January 31st. We've already raised 30% of our goal! Thanks for your support.

Participate in supporting the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be on IRC in the #fsf channel on freenode.

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

While the Free Software Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world over the past decade, it has the potential of being a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help!

If you are eager to help and you can't wait or are simply unable to make it onto IRC on Friday, our participation guide will provide you with all the information you need to get started on helping the Directory today! There are also weekly FSD Meetings pages that everyone is welcome to contribute to before, during, and after each meeting.