Seminars on free software licensing & GPL compliance

by Joshua Gay Contributions — Published on May 28, 2014 02:59 PM

The FSF's Licensing & Compliance Lab has hosted a number of educational seminars provides educational seminars on free software licenses. While registration is open to the public, our seminars are ofen target law students and legal professionals and when possible we try to get our courses approved for mandatory continuing legal education (MCLE) credits.

Below is a list of seminars with additional links to teaching materials when approipriate.

Seminar on GPL Enforcement and Legal Ethics

The Free Software Foundation's Seminar on GPL Enforcement and Legal Ethics was held on Monday, March 24th at Suffolk University Law School. Attendees of the half-day, three-session seminar will learned about: copyleft and other important terms in the GNU General Public License; best practices in the free software licensing enforcement process; and ethical considerations important to any lawyer that is advising free software users and developers. The event was aimed at legal professionals, as well as law students (who attended no cost).

Our highly experienced and knowledgeable team of instructors included: Karen Sandler, J.D., Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation and former general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center; Bradley Kuhn, Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy and a member of the Board of Directors of the FSF; and Donald R. Robertson, III, J.D., Copyright and Licensing Associate of the Free Software Foundation.

Materials

Event schedule (PDF)
Speaker bios (PDF)
Session 1 & 3 materials (PDF) (see the git repo for latest version or to participate in further development)
Session 2 materials (PDF)

The GPL and Legal Aspects of Free Software Development

The FSF offered a one-day seminar on the GNU General Public License (GPL) and Legal Aspects of Free Software Development, in partnership with Columbia Law School on Wednesday, September 28, 2005. The seminar was led by Eben Moglen, General Counsel to the FSF; Daniel Ravicher, Senior Counsel to the FSF; and David Turner, GPL Compliance Engineer.

Detailed Study and Analysis of GPL and LGPL

This one-day course held at Columbia Law School on January 20, 2004 gave a section-by-section explanation of the most popular Free Software copyright license, the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), and taught lawyers, software developers, managers and business people how to use the GPL (and GPL'd software) successfully in a new Free Software business and in existing, successful enterprises.

GPL and Free Software Licensing

The FSF offered a two days of seminar at Stanford University in northern California on the GPL and Free Software Licensing on August 24 and 25, 2004.

The seminars were be taught by Daniel Ravicher, Senior Counsel to FSF and Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation; and Bradley Kuhn, FSF's Executive Director.

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