Non-Profit Centers of FLOSS Development

Bradley M. Kuhn

Friday 9 March 2011

Who Am I?

• President and Executive Director of Software Freedom Conservancy.

• An 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charity dedicated to promoting, advancing, defending, and developing Free, Libre and Open Source Software.

• And, yes, I used to work for the FSF …
  • … and I’m still friends with RMS and on FSF’s Board.

A Brief Non-Profit Free Software History

• 1984: GNU Manifesto.

• RMS wrote in that GNU Manifesto:
  • “All sorts of development can be funded with a Software Tax”
  • “People with new ideas could distribute programs as [free software], asking for donations from satisfied users”

Some FSF History

• FSF is founded in 1984.

• Gets 501(c)(3) status in 1985.

• FSF’s first 12 years is mostly to employ developers!
  • 46% of FSF’s history.
  • (Source: GNU’s Bulletins 1986–1997)

FSF-Employed Developers

• 1985–1997: FSF employs many developers:
  • Paul Rubin (GCC)
  • Jay Fenlason (awk, ld, etc)
  • Diane Barlow Close (documentation)
  • Roland McGrath (glibc, make)
  • Mike Rowan
  • Thomas Bushnell (tar, HURD)
  • Jim Blandy (Emacs, Guile)
  • Tom Lord (oleo, rx, Guile)
  • Melissa Weisshaus (documentation)
  • Lisa Goldstien (documentation)
  • Karl Heuer (Emacs)
  • Miles Bader (HURD)
  • Ian Murdock (Debian (yes, FSF funded 1st Debian (!)))

The Rise of the Volunteers

• Most Free Software is written by volunteers …
  • … who are only such from the point of view of the projects.
• The volunteers are usually paid for by for-profits
  • Red Hat, Google, IBM, etc.

For-Profit vs. Non-Profit

• For-profits act in interest in shareholders.

• 501(c)(3) Non-profits act in interest of the public good.

• Software freedom is best when in public good.

• Non-profit orgs (NPOs) are best place for software freedom.

• NPOs can accept for-profit donations, but provide a firewall.

For-Profit-Employee “Volunteers”

• Most code written by for-profit employees.
  • 20% time is a boon to software freedom.
  • But codebases drift in directions of company’s needs.
• Some developers should be funded by non-profits,
  • to mitigate dangers of for-profit control.

It’s the duty of all Free Software developers to steal as much time as they can from their employers for software freedom.

What Can NPOs Do?

• Collect (USA-tax-deductible) donations for a project.
  • both individual and corporate.

• Distribute that money to advance project (and public good).

• Make sure project isn’t controlled by for-profit interests.

• Help leadership with non-technical decisions.

Organization Proliferation

• Too many NPOs will confuse donors.

• Need a board of directors, incorporation, meetings, IRS filings.

• Hackers end up doing work they hate.

• Less Free Software gets written.

Aggregating Under Umbrella

• Conservancy is designed as one organization.

• Composed of many different projects.

• Each has its own funds.

• One board of directors, one non-technical governance structure.

Funding Through Conservancy

• Travel to conferences.

• Handling Google SoC.

• Conference invoicing and contracts.

• Stipends and paid development contracts for developers.

• Fiscal oversight.

Conservancy Success: Twisted

• Throughout 2008 and 2009, Twisted needed Jean-Paul Calderone’s attention to bugsquashing and maintenance.

• Twisted community sought major corporate donors and many individual ones.

• Contract was funded for part-time work for Jean-Paul.

• We’re talking about having him start up work again soon.

Conservancy Success: Mercurial

I’m funding myself doing Linux kernel-space development contracts, but it slows down Mercurial because of the brain context switch to Python userspace.

• April 2010: Matt asked if Conservancy to handle donations to fund his Mercurial work.

• Drafted up a proposal.

• Matt’s been fully funded by donors through Conservancy since then.

Conservancy Success: PyPy

• PyPy has launched three initiaties to fund specific projects in PyPy.

• Py3k and Numpy have each individually raised nearly $42,000.

• Developers have already begun the Py3k and Numpy work.

• Stackless Transactional Memory fundraising campaign was launched this week.

More Info / Talk License

• URLs / Social Networking / Email:
  • Conservancy: sfconservancy.org & @conservancy
  • Me: faif.us, ebb.org/bkuhn & @bkuhn (identi.ca only)
  • Slides at: ebb.org/bkuhn/talks & gitorious.org/bkuhn/talks (source)