On February 10, 2010, the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Initiative co sponsored their first Legal Strategic Planning Session. I am glad to declare it a success. We had a very diverse group both professionally and geographically, with participants from Europe, Japan and the US.
We started the day with a discussion by Damien Eastwood (formerly of Sun Microsystems, Inc.) about his experience, both legal and practical, in moving Java and Solaris to open source models. We then had a series of presentations on license due diligence from FSF Europe and Hewlett Packard. We also discussed the increasing problem of license compliance through a constantly changing tool chain and the potential to have a consistent industry wide approach to this “Bill of Materials” problem. Heather Meeker provided an overview of the trademark issues arising in open source licensing.
Simon Crosby from Xen provided an overview of cloud technology which is the latest challenge for the FOSS community. Our luncheon speaker was Marten Mickos, who provided a business perspective on the open source model. Rob Tiller provided an overview of opensource.com. We also had a panel discussion of how best to respond to patent claims in a way which will not create problems during the litigation. Karen Copenhaver and I provided an overview of the status of the ALI Principles of the Law of Software Contracts. We finished up with a wine tasting from Pine Ridge arranged by Andrew Aitken of Olliance Group.
Karen Copenhaver deserves special thanks for conceiving of the opportunity and then organizing the first one (always, the toughest!). Given the number of legal issues for the FOSS community, I am sure that we will need to continue this tradition. if you want to learn more about the discussion, Karen Copenhaver and I will be summarizing it in our Black Duck webinar on Tuesday, February 23 http://www.blackducksoftware.com/files/legal-webinar-series.html.
On February 10, 2010 the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Initiative will host a Strategic Planning Session for lawyers active in support of adoption of free and open source software. As we begin a new year and a new decade, we invite you to join us to consider what legal issues we anticipate may arise and what foundations we might be able to lay to support continued unimpeded development and deployment of free and open source software.
The purpose of the meeting is to collectively look forward and to consider new issues, new venues, and new technologies.
What do you foresee as the challenges that the community will face in 2010 and beyond?
The session will include panel discussions and updates, but the entire day will be more of a conversation than a lecture. We want you to come prepared to participate! Some of the topics that have been suggested already include: education of the community on patent matters; the Risk Grid and the Linking Project underway at FSFE; lessons learned from the license proliferation discussion and other comet-like issue phenomena in the open source ecosystem; how FOSS and commercial interests will co-exist and change each other in the longer term; and updates on FOSSBazaar and the SFLC activities. We are seeking your suggestions for topics to discuss in the registration process and we hope that you will be thoughtful in your response. We also hope to have several seminars by engineers on certain technical issues which are important to legal analysis.
Date: February 10, 2010
Time: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Location: DLA Piper LLP, 2000 University Avenue, East Palo Alto, California 94303-2214
Costs: There will be a cover charge of $30 to cover catering costs for this event but there will be no conference fee.
Registration: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/component/registrationpro/?func=details&did=29
Please register early as space is limited. For more information please contact: Karen F. Copenhaver (kfc@choate.com) or Mark Radcliffe (mark.radcliffe@dlapiper.com)
The Affero General Public License (”AGPL”) has been approved by the OSI. The AGPL is an important option for companies whose software can be used to provide a service. It includes a “network use” provision which requires that the source code be made available to “users” of the service. For a more information about the AGPL, you can read my earlier post. http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.blogspot.com/2007/11/free-software-foundation-announces.html
Thanks to Funambol for submitting the license to the OSI and following up. http://www.funambol.com/blog/capo/. OSI approval is important for adoption in many large organizations which use OSI approval as a basis to approve the use of software distributed under such a license. I am particularly pleased that OSI adopted AGPL because Fabrizio Capobianco at Funambol and I have a bet about whether GPLv3 or AGPL will be the dominant license in five years. He can no longer complain that it is not a level playing field! So consider AGPL, but remember I have money riding on your adoption of GPLv3.