The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is an organization that provides ''

pro bono ( en, 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. In the United States, the term typically refers to provision of legal services by legal professionals for pe ...

'' legal representation and related services to not-for-profit developers of

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

. It was launched in February 2005 with

Eben Moglen Eben Moglen (born 1959) is an American legal scholar who is professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, and is the founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. Professional biography Moglen started out as ...

as chairman. Initial funding of

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

4 million was pledged by

Open Source Development Labs Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) was a non-profit organization supported by a consortium to promote Linux for enterprise computing. Founded in 2000, OSDL positioned itself as an independent, non-profit lab for developers who are adding enterpris ...

. A news article stated:

GPL version 3

SFLC represented and advised the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

, one of its principal clients, throughout the process of drafting and public discussion of version 3 of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

(GPLv3) during 2005–2007. Along with FSF president Richard M. Stallman, SFLC director Eben Moglen and then-SFLC counsel

Richard Fontana Richard Fontana is a lawyer in the United States who is particularly known for his work in the area of open source and free software. Fontana works at Red Hat. Before Red Hat he was counsel at the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). In 2012 Fontana ...

were principal authors of GPLv3,

LGPLv3 The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

, and the

GNU Affero General Public License The GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU General Public License, version 3 and the Affero General Public License. The Free So ...

BusyBox litigation

During 2007 and 2008, SFLC filed a series of copyright infringement lawsuits against various defendants, on behalf of Erik Andersen and Rob Landley, the principal developers of

BusyBox BusyBox is a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, and FreeBSD, although many of the tools it provides are designed to work with in ...

. These lawsuits claimed violations of version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv2). On September 20, 2007, SFLC filed a lawsuit against Monsoon Multimedia, Inc. alleging that Monsoon had violated GPLv2 by including BusyBox code in their Monsoon Multimedia HAVA line of products without releasing BusyBox

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

. This is believed to be the first U.S. court case in which the complaint concerned a GPL violation. On October 30, 2007, an SFLC press release announced that the lawsuit had been settled with Monsoon agreeing to comply with the GPL and pay a sum of money to the plaintiffs. On November 20, 2007, SFLC filed a lawsuit against Xterasys Corporation and High-Gain Antennas, LLC. On December 17, 2007, SFLC announced a settlement with Xterasys; the company agreed to stop product shipments until it published complete source code for the GPL code and to pay an undisclosed sum to the plaintiffs. The suit against High-Gain Antennas was settled on March 6, 2008, with the company agreeing to comply with GPL and paying an undisclosed sum to the plaintiffs. On December 7, 2007 SFLC filed a lawsuit against Verizon Communications, Inc. alleging that Verizon had violated GPLv2 by distributing BusyBox in the Actiontec MI424WR MoCA

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

routers bundled with the FiOS fiber optic bandwidth service, without providing corresponding source code. A settlement announced on March 17, 2008, included an agreement to comply with the GPL and an undisclosed sum paid to the plaintiffs. On June 10, 2008, SFLC announced the filing of lawsuits against Bell Microproducts, Inc. and Super Micro Computer, Inc. On December 14, 2009, SFLC announced the filing of a lawsuit on behalf of its clients,

Software Freedom Conservancy Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is an organization that provides a non-profit home and infrastructure support for free and open source software projects. The organization was established in 2006, and as of June 2022, had over 40 member pro ...

and Erik Andersen, against 14 companies, including

Best Buy Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebra ...

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

, and Westinghouse alleging these companies had violated GPLv2 by distributing BusyBox in some of their products without releasing BusyBox source code. For instance,

released its LN52A650 TV firmware in 2010, which was used later as the base for the community SamyGO project. By 21 September 2013, all of the defendant companies had agreed on settlement terms with the plaintiffs, except for Westinghouse, against whom

default judgment Default judgment is a binding judgment in favor of either party based on some failure to take action by the other party. Most often, it is a judgment in favor of a plaintiff when the defendant has not responded to a summons or has failed to appear ...

was entered.

Cisco lawsuit

On December 11, 2008, SFLC announced the filing of a lawsuit on behalf of its client, the

, against Cisco Systems, Inc. This lawsuit was the first suit ever initiated by the Free Software Foundation,. On May 20, 2009, the parties announced a settlement.

Staff

, SFLC's staff included: *

, President and Executive Director *

Mishi Choudhary Mishi Choudhary is a technology lawyer and online civil liberties activist working in the United States and India. She is the senior vice president and general counsel of Virtru, a role she started in 2022. Prior to that role, Mishi was the Lega ...

, Legal Director * Tanisha Madrid-Batista, Chief Operating Officer * Daniel Gnoutcheff, Systems Administrator

Directors

, SFLC's directors were: *

* Diane M. Peters *

Daniel Weitzner Professor Daniel J. Weitzner is the director of the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative and principal research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab CSAIL. He teaches Internet public policy in MIT's Computer Scien ...

Former staff

, Counsel * Jim Garrison, Public Relations Coordinator *

Bradley M. Kuhn Bradley M. Kuhn (born 1973) is a free software activist from the United States. Kuhn is currently Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence of the Software Freedom Conservancy, having previously been executive director. Until 2010 he was the FLOSS C ...

, Policy Analyst and Technology Director * Matt Norwood, Counsel * Jonathan D. Bean, Counsel * Daniel J. Byrnes, Counsel * Albert Cahn, Counsel * Daniel B. Ravicher, Legal Director * Karen M. Sandler, General Counsel * James Vasile, Counsel * Rachel A. Wiener, Office Manager * Justin C. Colannino, Counsel * Aaron Williamson, Counsel * Marc Jones, Counsel

Clients

SFLC adds Wine to client list

Press Release: SFLC to represent the Wine project
(see also

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

)
X.Org Foundation Hires Software Freedom Law Center

SFLC to represent Plone and the Plone Foundation
(see

Plone Plone is a free and open source content management system (CMS) built on top of the Zope application server. Plone is positioned as an enterprise CMS and is commonly used for intranets and as part of the web presence of large organizations. Hi ...

)

References

External links

*
New York Times article about SFLC launch

eWeek article about SFLC launch

Moglen plans "general counsel's office for the entire movement"
Feb 2005,

Newsforge Geeknet, Inc. is a Fairfax County, Virginia–based company that is a subsidiary of GameStop. The company was formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc. History VA Research VA Research was founded in Nove ...

ZDNet interview with Eben Moglen where SFLC is discussed
{{FOSS Free and open-source software organizations Organizations established in 2005 Legal advocacy organizations in the United States 501(c)(3) organizations Organizations based in New York City