| LF announces open source Legal Summits |
Sep. 11, 2007
The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, will announce on Sept. 12 that it will hold two legal summits over the next 12 months for leading attorneys from open source-oriented companies and the community.
With legal issues becoming ever more important to software developers, the LF has decided that it's time to start addressing the issues in a more systematic way. For example, open-standard wars, such as Microsoft Open XML, patent reform, open-source patent FUD-mongering, and the seemingly never-ending battle with SCO are all concerns for today's open source business.
These LF meetings will be vendor-neutral forums for attorneys to collaborate on understanding and solving legal issues surrounding Linux and open-source software. LF's recently announced legal team, Karen Copenhaver and Andrew 'Andy' Updegrove, will be hosting the meetings.
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), a group of lawyers that provides pro bono legal services to protect and advance FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software), is pursuing a similar course. The SFLC will be hosting its the first Legal Summit for Software Freedom on Oct. 12.
"By hosting the SFLC Legal Summit [at Columbia Law School in New York], we intend to bring together leading attorneys in the Software Freedom community to discuss matters of mutual interest and concern," said Eben Moglen, executive director of SFLC and co-author of the GPLv3. "We also intend to welcome other lawyers and interested members of the public to the summit by giving a series of presentations on the most important FOSS-related legal topics."
The first LF Legal Summit will be held Oct. 25-26, 2007 in Boston, and will only be open to Linux Foundation members and their legal counsel. Companies that have already agreed to attend are HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, and other leading open source-oriented companies. At this invitation-only Summit, members will focus on the issues of greatest common interest with regard to open standards and licensing. Presentations and working sessions will focus on building a legal defense infrastructure for Linux and evolving intellectual property rights policies optimized to support open development models.
The next LF Legal Summit will be held in spring, 2008 and will be expanded to include legal experts from all backgrounds, who will join LF member counsel in a collaborative learning environment. This conference will fill a glaring need for many attorneys who are looking for practical legal guidance on the development and distribution of open-source software and the legal framework within which standards can be created to serve both proprietary and open-source software models. This Summit is expected to be an annual LF event.
"Many of today's legal conferences unnecessarily scare or confuse open-source users, developers and vendors," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. "The LF is able to provide a forum in which it can bring together its members' legal counsel as well as its own legal team to translate issues into the straightforward matters they really are and to bring practical education to a wider audience."
LF legal advisors Copenhaver and Updegrove will leverage the LF's neutral forum to provide the Linux ecosystem with important information on licenses, standards, and patent issues in order to reduce any confusion and foster further innovation and adoption of Linux. The two will also work with the array of legal talent at LF member companies to coordinate legal resources to best respond to issues facing the platform and other open-source projects.
Copenhaver is a partner in Choate, Hall, & Stewart LLP's Business & Technology practice, focusing on technology transfer and licensing of intellectual property with a specific emphasis on open source business models. Andy Updegrove is a partner and founder of Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a Boston-based technology law firm, and is a well-known expert on open standards.
To learn more about these Summits, you can visit the Legal Summit page on the LF's website. You can also read the recently launched LF blog on open-source legal matters. This blog will provide updates on these conferences as well as other open source legal matters. Companies and organizations interested in attending this member-only event, but who are not currently LF members, have been asked to email the LF membership group.
--Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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