Conservancy Formalizes its Evaluation Committee and Appoints a New Director

A Committee With Decades' Experience In FLOSS and Experienced Non-Profit Manager Help Scale Conservancy's Capacity

April 23, 2013

Today, the Software Freedom Conservancy announces the appointment of one new member of its Board of Directors, and formal delegation of project member application to Conservancy's existing Evaluation Committee [ http://sfconservancy.org/about/eval-committee/ ]. The new director, Mike Linksvayer, brings even more expertise to Conservancy's Directorship [ http://sfconservancy.org/about/board/ ], which has always included many experienced non-profit and Open Source and Free Software project leaders. Meanwhile, the now-formalized Evaluation Committee adds even more depth to the critical application stage of Conservancy's program activities.

In addition to the new Directorship, Linksvayer continues his ongoing service on Conservancy's Evaluation Committee, which has already been operating for many years in an advisory-only capacity. In addition to appointing Linksvayer to the Board of Directors, Conservancy's Board also formally authorized the Evaluation Committee to:

• review and approve FLOSS projects' applications to join Conservancy, and
• authorize the Executive Director and General Counsel to negotiate and execute fiscal sponsorship agreements with the identified leadership of FLOSS projects, as approved by the Evaluation Committee.

Current members of the Evaluation Committee can be found on Conservancy's website [ http://sfconservancy.org/about/eval-committee ]. Conservancy expects that this more complete delegation to this committee will speed Conservancy's pipeline for new member projects applications. (Projects interested projects should review Conservancy's application guidelines [ http://sfconservancy.org/members/apply/ ] and contact <apply@sfconservancy.org>)

As a newly appointed director, Linksvayer brings to Conservancy another decade of non-profit management and FLOSS-related community experience. He served as CTO and subsequently Vice President of Creative Commons [ http://creativecommons.org/ ] from 2003 until 2012, and also serves on the Board of Directors of OpenHatch [ https://openhatch.org/ ]. Linksvayer said: It is an honor to serve on Conservancy's Evaluation Committee, and now also as a Director. The past year has seen increasing recognition of the importance of good governance for FLOSS projects and organizations. I am eager to increase my help to Conservancy as it continues to lead in this area. Additionally, I am look forward to learning and cross-pollinating best practices to and from other free-as-in-freedom domains.

Conservancy's Directors [ http://sfconservancy.org/about/board/ ] manage the organization and oversee the work of Conservancy's President and Executive Director (Bradley M. Kuhn). Conservancy welcomes Linksvayer's and all members of the Evaluation Committee's assistance and contributions to this important work, and also thanks its current directors and officers [ http://sfconservancy.org/about/officers/ ] for their continued efforts. All Conservancy's directors and officers are currently uncompensated volunteers (except for Kuhn, who is employed full-time by Conservancy as its Executive Director).