Free & Open Source Defense Fund

Since the release of PGP in the early 1990s, code has been treated as protected speech by the 1st Amendment of the US Bill of Rights. A new lawsuit is beginning to unwind that precedent by attempting to establish a fiduciary relationship between coder and user where no contractual obligation exists today. This implies that open source cryptographers become liable when a user loses their private keys, database maintainers become liable when backup recovery is ineffective, Linux kernel developers become liable when they do not protect the best interests of all of their users, and more.

Read our Open Letter to the Open Source Software Industry to find out more about the situation, how it impacts you, and what you can do about it.

For more details on making donations and how the funds will be used, please see the donation page on fossdef.org.

Please only use this GoFundMe for donations up to $9,000. If you are interested in making a larger donation, please reach out to us below.

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