FSF licensing team's 2012 - 400 compliance reports resolved

Joshua Gay, the Free Software Foundation's Licensing and Compliance Manager, has reported on the FSF licensing team's 2012 activities, as the FSF's 2013 fundraising comes to an end. According to Gay's post there were over 400 reports of "suspected license violations" which the team resolved. They also answered over 600 general licensing and compliance questions. This work has reduced the team's backlog and, in 2013, the two-person team is looking at being able to "more ambitiously pursue our licensing compliance cases" and working more with groups, such as Creative Commons.

Other work in 2012 included the first awarding of the "Respects Your Freedom" certification. The certification programme was launched in 2010, but it took until 2012 to create the marks, certification lab and process to enable the LulzBot AO-100 3D Printer to be awarded that first certificate. Gay says they hope to build on that work in 2013, developing better relationships with hardware makers and "hopefully certifying more products". In 2012, the FSF also produced more educational material, such as a guide to licence selection, improved resource pages and updates to the GNU licences FAQ. "Licensing is one area where we want to make sure that our answers to those questions and the materials we provide are both accurate and easy to find," says Gay.

As of 29 January, the FSF's fundraising drive for 2013 had already exceeded its goal of $350,000 by raising $389,000. The FSF has yet to announce the final results of the 2013 fundraiser.

(djwm)