0x65: Linux Foundation's Community Bridge

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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 <[email protected]>.

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Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch

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