Git / Software Freedom Conservancy status report (2025)

Git / Software Freedom Conservancy status report (2025)

[Taylor Blau]

As we get close to Git Merge next week, I wanted to refresh the annual
"Git at SFC" status report. This report reflects changes in project's
financials and our other activities at SFC.

This email will serve as that report for the year 2025.

The previous report (from last year, whose format I have been trying to
stick to) may be found at:

  https://lore.kernel.org/git/Zusxcweod1O88h7j@nand.local/

# Background

Git is a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy. The Git
project joined Conservancy in 2010 so Conservancy could help us manage
our money and other assets, and provide legal representation for
trademark matters. Conservancy doesn't hold any copyright on any of the
project's code. Similarly, being a member project at Conservancy does
not grant Conservancy any influence in the project's development. The
technical direction that Git takes is up to us.

Interested readers can take a look at a more full picture of what
Conservancy does for the Git project at:

  https://sfconservancy.org/projects/services/

A "Project Leadership Committee" (PLC) represents the Git project at
Conservancy. The PLC currently consists of Junio C Hamano, Christian
Couder, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, and myself.

# Financials

Since we don't have real time access to our financials, we rely on
Conservancy to send us snapshots of our ledger as we request them. This
report will share the financials from a snapshot taken on 2025-09-24,
which should be fairly close to where we are at the time of the
Contributor's Summit and Git Merge next week.

The Git project currently has ~$99k USD in our accounts, which is a ~$6k
USD increase from where we were around this time last year. Last year we
reported a increase of ~$4k USD over the previous year, so this year's
financials around in line with what we've seen in the past.

Here are the project's ledger numbers as they have changed since when I
last shared them as of 2024-09-18. Note that there is some back-dating
going on here for ledger entries that did not clear until after the last
report.

            $-8,466.35 Income:Git
            $-8,210.10   Donations
              $-256.25   Royalties
             $3,409.06 Expenses:Git
               $152.69   General (Bank Fees)
             $1,846.90   Conferences:Travel
             $1,250.00   Filing Fees
               $154.23   Hosting
               $112.50   Promotional Items
                 $5.24   Tax:Sales
                $-5.90 Assets:Receivable:Accounts
               $723.53 Liabilities:Payable:Accounts
  --------------------
						$-4,339.66

(As usual, this is double-entry, so negative numbers are good.)

Our balance as of 2024-09-17 was $-93,836.27 (not accounting for
backdated entries). Our balance as of 2025-09-24 is $-98,781.05. That
is a net change of $-4,944.78, which is better than what is reported
above. Despite my best efforts, I can't seem to account for where the
extra $605.12 is coming from.

Like last time, most of our money comes from donations. This year,
~3.02% of it comes from royalties, which is a little better than the
proportion from last year (which was closer to 1.8%). All of the
royalties come from Amazon affiliate links. 10% of all incoming money
goes to Conservancy's general fund (the above numbers are after that 10%
has been deducted).

## Expenses

More interesting is where we spent money. Like last year, the biggest
chunk of our expenses went towards conference travel. We spent more in
that category than last year (where we spent only $675.96).

This year we have a new pair of expenditures totalling $1,250 USD for
trademark filing fees, handled through Conservancy's legal counsel. $650
of that came from our Section(s) 8 & 9 renewal[1], and the remainder was
used to file a Petition for Cancellation against a third-party[2]. We
continue to receive requests to use the Mark in various ways.

We are no longer paying Heroku to host git-scm.com. The $153.23 we did
spend in the "Hosting" category was for one final month of Heroku, and
domain renewals for git-scm.com and git-scm.org. Hosting the git-scm.com
site on GitHub Pages is free, and saves the project ~$721.32 USD per
year.

## Future expenses?

The project continues to take in a modest but quite healthy amount of
money, and has very few expenses.

I continue to wonder if there are other ways that we should be spending
our money. If others have thoughts about what the project should do with
its money, please feel free to share them.

### Outreachy

The Git project participates in Outreachy, which is a program that
provides internships in open-source to anyone from any background who
faces under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the
technical industry where they are living.

Outreachy suggests that companies to donate $10k USD per internship they
want to sponsor (previously this was $8k USD). The Git project has
historically benefited from GitHub and/or GitLab covering these costs
for us. We may want to consider budgeting for this in the future
ourselves, in case we want to take on more interns than those companies
are willing to sponsor.

# Trademark matters

As above, we filed two petitions related to the "GIT" trademark this
year[1,2]. The PLC continues to receive a steady trickle of requests to
use the "GIT" mark in various ways that are not compliant with our
policy[3].

I cannot recall us approving any requests outside of ones that did not
violate our policy to begin with. Over the years there has been some
light discussion on if we want to change how we treat our trademark
and/or if we want to alter the policy.

Nothing substantial has happened in those discussions, though others
should feel free to resurrect them if they wish.

# Conclusion

That's all for this year. I'm happy to answer any questions on the list,
and I'll propose a session on it at the Contributor's Summit in a couple
of days, in case folks want to discuss this further in person.

I'm looking forward to seeing folks next who are able to attend Git
Merge either in person or remotely. See you then!

Thanks,
Taylor

[1]: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn85961336&docId=S8920250131165809&linkId=3#docIndex=2&page=1
[2]: https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/ttabvue-92089369-CAN-1.pdf
[3]: https://git-scm.com/about/trademark

Re: Git / Software Freedom Conservancy status report (2025)

[Christian Couder]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 9:12 PM Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com> wrote:

> ## Expenses
>
> More interesting is where we spent money. Like last year, the biggest
> chunk of our expenses went towards conference travel. We spent more in
> that category than last year (where we spent only $675.96).

I think the $1,846.90 we spent towards conference travel was likely
compensated by Google giving to the project for mentors travelling to
the GSoC mentor Summit. It looks like what Google gives likely goes
into the "Donations" account, so it's not easy to match to the
corresponding expenses.

Outside of the GSoC Mentor Summit, I must say that we have tried to
sponsor people to come to the Git Merge 2025, but the effort we have
made, and we made significantly more effort than previous years on
this, have all failed due to visa issues.

> ## Future expenses?
>
> The project continues to take in a modest but quite healthy amount of
> money, and has very few expenses.
>
> I continue to wonder if there are other ways that we should be spending
> our money. If others have thoughts about what the project should do with
> its money, please feel free to share them.

It has been suggested several times (including last year and this year
during the Contributor's Summit) that we give a good chunk of what we
have (for example 50%) on our bank account to Outreachy's general
fund. This will soon fund contributions to other open source projects
(and perhaps one day to Git if the companies that are currently
donating for the Outreachy interns working on Git stop donating).

In https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAP8UFD2OcOaSsumKGZ-oVVWzttc48CvmQZD8tQaWTGQR7wR1EA@mail.gmail.com/
I have mentioned that Outreachy is navigating significant financial
challenges these days. Here are related links (again):

https://www.outreachy.org/blog/2025-08-14/december-2025-call-for-mentoring-organizations/
https://www.outreachy.org/blog/2024-08-14/outreachy-needs-your-help/

Outreachy is part of the Conservancy (https://sfconservancy.org/) like
Git, so I think we should help them as we have no need in the
foreseeable future for the $100k USD we have on our account.

> ### Outreachy
>
> The Git project participates in Outreachy, which is a program that
> provides internships in open-source to anyone from any background who
> faces under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the
> technical industry where they are living.
>
> Outreachy suggests that companies to donate $10k USD per internship they
> want to sponsor (previously this was $8k USD).

On https://www.outreachy.org/docs/community/#funding-requirements they
say it's between $8k and $10k USD per internship:

- $7,000 USD donation towards the Outreachy internship stipend
- $1,000 to $3,000 USD donation towards the Outreachy program activities fund

> The Git project has
> historically benefited from GitHub and/or GitLab covering these costs
> for us. We may want to consider budgeting for this in the future
> ourselves, in case we want to take on more interns than those companies
> are willing to sponsor.

Let's try again to ask GitLab and GitHub. It has always worked in the
past, so it makes sense to try again. But yeah, if it doesn't work,
the Git project can then donate for the internships. And if we have
donated to the general fund, then we can always ask to benefit from it
instead of donating again.

Note that this year we are likely to have only at most one intern, as
it looks like few people are willing to mentor. This means the average
number of interns we mentor per year is likely to stay close to 1. So
the risk of Git running out of money in the long run due to Outreachy
interns is very low.

Thanks for your hard work on this report!