Wed, 15 Jan 2014 09:08:31 -0800
2014, fosdem

Legal Issues at FOSDEM 2014

I'm very pleased to announce the Call For Participation for the FOSDEM 2014 Legal Issues DevRoom.

This is the third year that I've been lucky enough to collaborate with some leading practitioners of Free Software and Open Source licensing and community leadership to organize this intense event on the topic of what makes FLOSS possible and what are the key issues facing FLOSS today. I'm joined by my friends Karen Sandler, Bradley Kuhn, and Richard Fontana.

I have been fascinated by the intersection of law and technology because it is the clever use of copyright that makes Free, Libre and Open Source Software possible. We hope to stimulate discussion on topics such as:

Copyleft vs. permissive licensing: What is a policy case for copyleft? If so what form should it take?

How is software freedom important in ensuring privacy and security?

What defines a Free Software and/or Open Source project?

Do traditional Free Software values face some level of cooption from for-profit corporate interest? If so, how?

Copyleft licensing models and how they relate to business models. Are there some business models that are license-permissible but bad for community building? On the other side, does your license choice limit or expand your community?

Eroding software freedom in the proliferation of closed computing devices such as mobile phones and tablets

Copyleft enforcement and compliance planning from a developer perspective. What is the future of GPL enforcement? Is it working?

What is its impact on adoption of copyleft?

How does the 'so-called' software patent war impact Free Software and Open Source?

Copyleft license compatibility. What are the challenges of code base merges when various licenses are in use? How does a compatibility analysis between licenses work?

Please submit your talk idea before December 1st and plan to join us in Brussels on February 1st and 2nd!

Legal Issues at FOSDEM 2013

Legal Issues at FOSDEM 2012

fosdem