Free Software Foundation

The Compliance Lab has been an informal activity of the FSF since 1992 and was formalized in December 2001. We handle all licensing-related issues for FSF. We serve the free software community by providing the public with a "knowledge infrastructure" surrounding the GNU GPL and free software licensing, and enforcing the license on FSF-copyrighted software.

What We Do

Our biggest task is educating users and developers working with free software about our licenses and related issues. We offer a number of resources to provide this information, from essays and FAQs to speeches and seminars. If none of that helps, we'll be happy to answer your question via e-mail. Learn more about free software licensing.

In order to stay effective, a license must be enforced. The FSF holds the copyrights for many popular free software programs, such as GCC and glibc, and we enforce those licenses. We investigate all reports we receive about free software license violations, and negotiate with violators to bring them into full compliance. Learn more about our compliance work.

While license education and enforcement are the focus of our efforts, we deal with all issues related to free software licensing. We help coordinate the license revision process, evaluate requests for license exceptions, and more.

Latest News

April 14: The FSF is recommending CiviCRM as a donor and contact management system for nonprofit organizations. As part of this effort, the Compliance Lab cooperated with CiviCRM developers to publish project licensing information clearly and effectively. Learn more about the process in our blog post.

March 24: The FSF submitted comments to the United States' newly-created "Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator" on its upcoming Joint Strategic Plan. The comments argue that the government should adopt free software and encourage its use elsewhere to provide more freedom to computer users and reduce the need for such enforcement. Read the full comment to IPEC.

February 16: The FSF filed comments in the U.S. Trade Representative's Special 301 Review, urging it to stop pressuring foreign governments to enact anti-circumvention legislation, like the DMCA's. Read the blog post with more background and the full comment to the USTR.

GPLv3 Action

Have you seen news reports that mischaracterize GPLv3? Or forum posts that spread incorrect information? Help us fight it! We can't address all of these ourselves, but with the community's help, we can do a lot to help people talk about GPLv3 accurately. Let us know what you find, too—we may try to address it ourselves one way or another, or perhaps use it to improve our GPL FAQ.

Would you like to have someone speak to your organization about GPLv3 or other GNU licensing issues? FSF Licensing Compliance Engineer Brett Smith is happy to talk to groups about a wide variety issues. Please contact us for details.

What we're working on right now

The Free Documentation License is being updated, and we're preparing a Simpler Free Documentation License for users who don't need some of the FDL's stronger attribution requirements. Work is still ongoing to address a couple of major issues before we release new drafts; once that's finished, we will continue the revision process with at least one more round of public drafts and feedback before finally releasing these licenses.

Various GNU projects, such as GCC and Automake, have exceptions to their licenses that need to be updated as they migrate to GPLv3. Our attorneys at the Software Freedom Law Center have been working hard to make sure everything's up-to-date, and we'll be distributing those to GNU maintainers as quickly as we can.

Who We Are

The Compliance Lab relies upon the efforts of many people, from volunteers pitching in a few hours a week to full-time attorneys. If you're interested, we'd love to have your help. Learn more about the Compliance Lab team.

Do you have any questions or comments about the Compliance Lab? Feel free to contact us.