As we continue to innovate at the technical level it is equally important to discuss innovative legal concepts to allow the unfettered deployment and development of free and open source software.
To that end, on February 10, 2010 the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Initiative will host a Strategic Planning Session for lawyers active in support or adoption of free and open source software. At this meeting our legal community will consider what legal issues we anticipate may arise and what foundations we might be able to lay to support continued rise 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.
The event will be open to qualified lawyers who are active in the field of open source development or commercial deployment. The session will include panel discussions and updates, but the entire day will be more of a conversation than a lecture. We want people 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. Participants will be asked to provide their suggestions for topics to discuss in the registration process and we hope that you will be thoughtful in your response. We will not identify the source of any topics posed for consideration without permission. We will also 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.
To request an invitation register here:
Open Source Legal Invitation Request
Your registration will be reviewed and you will be notified if accepted. Please register early as space is limited.