URL: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2016/aug/22/brett-joins/

Brett Smith Joins Conservancy as Director of Strategic Initiatives

Free software advocate brings longtime community focus with expertise in licensing and software development

Software Freedom Conservancy is pleased to announce the addition of Brett Smith as its Director of Strategic Initiatives. Brett will be Conservancy's fourth full-time staffer, and will contribute to the organization's charitable mission on several wide-ranging fronts — from software development, to systems administration, to organizational operations, to logistics. Brett will contribute to FLOSS projects that support Conservancy's infrastructure, including leading Conservancy's NPO Accounting Project. Brett will also provide Conservancy's member projects with additional support and mentorship, and will strengthen the public voice of the organization.

We had an overwhelming response to our job posting, with a lot of exceptional applicants said Karen Sandler, Conservancy's Executive Director.After a careful hiring process, we're thrilled to hire Brett. He's demonstrated an impressive commitment to software freedom and has the talent to fill so many of the roles that Conservancy needs.

I'm excited to join Conservancy, commented Brett. The organization's work has already brought tremendous benefits to the entire FLOSS community. I'm eager to work full time on initiatives like the NPO Accounting project to address needs that free software hasn't met yet.

Brett brings to Conservancy fourteen years of experience as a free software advocate and software developer. Prior to joining Conservancy, Brett worked as a software engineer and FLOSS project maintainer for Curoverse, and as a systems engineer for the World Wide Web Consortium. Brett also further adds to Conservancy's expertise with free software license compliance: as the Free Software Foundation's License Compliance Engineer, he gained experience in managing copyleft license compliance matters, and has written and given talks on the subject. Brett's full bio is available.