From: Solomon Peachy via rockbox-dev <rockbox-dev_at_cool.haxx.se>
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2020 17:44:51 -0400

Hey,

I figured I'd post this here as it's something that probably warrants
more long-form discussion.

I've been a supporter of the Software Freedom Conservancy [1] for a
while now, and their recent push [2] to get more aggressive with respect
to aggregigous GPL violators is something that could directly benefit
ongoing Rockbox devlelopment.

Part of this is an initiative to develop alternative firmware [3] for
hardware, a near-perfect alignment to the sort of thing Rockbox has been
doing for the past 18 or so years.

I've already reached out to them about possibly including Rockbox under
that umbrella, and pointed out some of the OEMs that ship players based
on Linux but don't provide any sources.

But all that aside, this got me thinking; the SFC also accepts "member
projects" to operate under their umbrella, providing services including
handling donations (which become tax-deductible!), holding assets, legal
support, and copyright enforcement. [4]

At the moment, I'm wearing many of these hats (and then some) for
Rockbox and I'd rather just concentrate on helping keep rockbox
relevant, especially with respect to new hardware ports.

Rockbox appears to be a good fit for operating under the SFC's aegis, as
we're explicitly GPL'd, and our accessibility framework in particular
indisputably places a lot of our efforts into the public interest.

I should point out that copyright assignment is *not* required, so in my
view if enough of the [semi-]active developers here think this is worth
pursuing, I'll reach out to the SFC and start the process. Personally,
I think this is will be an overwhelmingly net positive, but it's not
someting I think I should unilaterally do.

Comments?

[1] https://sfconservancy.org
[2] https://sfconservancy.org/news/2020/oct/01/new-copyleft-strategy-launched-with-ARDC-grant/
[3] https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/firmware-liberation.html
[4] https://sfconservancy.org/projects/services/

 - Solomon

-- 
Solomon Peachy			      pizza at shaftnet dot org (email&xmpp)
                                      _at_pizza:shaftnet dot org   (matrix)
High Springs, FL                      speachy (freenode)

Received on 2020-10-03