Sourceware.org is a code hosting server that has been providing repositories for many important free software projects, including most of the GNU toolchain (eg GCC, GDB, glibc, Binutils, etc.). The site has been technically and financially supported by Red Hat, with donations from Google and Mozilla. But recently Sourceware is planning to join the SFC Software Freedom Protection Association, become a member of the SFC project to obtain stable financial contributions.

SFC (Software Freedom Conservancy) is a public charity registered in the United States, providing free financial and management services for a series of free/open source software projects.

Currently SFC is associated with dozens of important free software projects, including Buildbot, Inkscape, Git, Outreachy, QEMU, and Xapian.

The story stems from this year Sourceware.org plans to develop several advanced features, such as a roadmap to improve tracking services, and email-based patch and test automation. These extra features are free to users, but free to users means that there is no profit, and even operating these services at the lowest cost is unsustainable in the long run. So Sourceware went the financial donation route and sought a formal charity to support the sourceware.org entity.

But entering SFC is currently only a Sourceware manager Frank Ch. Eigler One of the ideas, whether it is feasible or not depends on the approval of the SFC and the results of discussions with other managers. The plan is currently tracked on Sourceware Bugzilla, but has not been responded to by others.