Free as in Freedom

0x65: Linux Foundation's Community Bridge

Listen Later

Bradley and Karen discuss and critique the new initiative by the Linux Foundation called
CommunityBridge. The podcast includes various analysis that expands
upon their
blog post about Linux Foundation's CommunityBridge.

Show Notes:
Segment 0 (00:36)
  • Conservancy helped Free Software Foundation and GNOME Foundation begin
    • fiscal sponsorship work. (07:50)
  • Conservancy has always been very coordinated with Software in the
    • Public Interest, which is a FOSS fiscal sponsor that predates Conservancy. (08:26)
  • Conservancy helped NumFocus get started as a fiscal sponsor by providing
    • advice. (08:53)
  • The above are all 501(c)(3) charities, but there are also 501(c)(6)
    • fiscal sponsors, such as Linux Foundation and Eclipse
    Foundation. (10:00)
  • Bradley mentioned that projects that are forks can end up in different
    • fiscal sponsors, such as Hudson
    being in Eclipse Foundation, and Jenkins
    being associated with a Linux Foundation sub-org. (10:30)
  • Bradley mentioned that any project — be it SourceForge, GitHub, or
    • Community Bridge — that attempts to convince FOSS developers to use
    proprietary software for their projects is immediately suspect
    (12:00)
  • Open Collective, a
    • for-profit company seeking to do fiscal sponsorship (but attempting to
    release their code for it) is likely under the worst
    “competitive” threat from this initiative. (19:50)
    Segment 1 (21:23)
    • Projects that use CommunityBridge are
      • required to act in the common business interest of the Linux Foundation
      members. (27:30)
    • Board of Directors seats at the Linux Foundation are for sale,
      • according to their by-laws. (28:50)
    • Bradley advises that you should not put anything copylefted into
      • CommunityBridge — given Linux Foundation's position on copyleft and
      citing the ArduPilot/DroneCode example. (29:50)
    • CommunityBridge appears to
      • only allow governance based on the “benevolent dictator for life
      model” (31:40), at least with regard to who controls the money
      (34:30)
    • Bradley mentioned the LWN
      • article about Community Bridge. (33:22)
      Segment 2 (36:54)
      • Karen mentioned that CommunityBridge also purports to address
        • diversity and security issues for FOSS projects. (37:00)
      • Bradley mentioned the code hosted on k.sfconservancy.org and also the Reimbursenator
        • project that PSU students wrote. (42:00)
        Segment 3 (42:44)

        Bradley and Karen discuss (or, possibly don't) discuss what's coming up

        on the next episode. Fact of the matter is that this announcement wasn't written yet when we recorded this episode and we weren't sure if 0x65 would be released before or after that announcement was released. We'll be discussing that topic on 0x66.

        Send feedback and comments on the cast

        to .
        You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
        by following Conservancy on
        identi.ca and and Twitter.

        Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch

        of danlynch.org.
        Theme
        music written and performed
        by Mike Tarantino
        with Charlie Paxson on drums.

        The content
        of this
        audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
        under the Creative
        Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

        ...more
        View all episodesView all episodes
        Download on the App Store
        Free as in FreedomBy Free as in Freedom