Far be it from Shane to brag about his successful part of FSFE, so I did it
for him :-)
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/status_of_fs…
Below is the text, but in the actual blog entry there are links which might
also be interesting.
You can vote for it on FSDaily:
http://www.fsdaily.com/Legal/Status_of_FSFEs_legal_dept_FTF
=================
Inside FSFE, we talk a lot about our legal department, the FTF. I was in
the Zurich office a while ago with the FTF's coordinator, Shane Coughlan,
and took the opportunity to gather some info for anyone interested.
The FTF works in five main areas:
1. Building a European legal network
2. Producing documentation
3. GPL enforcement
4. FLA agreement for copyright management
5. Training and consultation
1. Legal network
For two years now, Shane's been building this network of lawyers and licence
experts which now includes 145 members. Three quarters of the members are
lawyers. The others are experts in company policy, licences, or technical
aspects of licence enforcement. About 120 come from Europe, and the others
are spread across The Philippines, Japan, Singapore, China, Taiwan, South
Korea, Australia, Canada, and the USA.
I think most network members support FSFE's work. I know others don't, and
that's ok. Whether we share a vision for the future or not, everyone has to
obey the GPL, so it's useful for free software licence compliance
specialists to talk with each other and share best practices. Most
discussion is about the GPL, but we talk about all free software licences.
Other topics such as software patents and antitrust are also discussed.
FTF organised Europe's first free software legal conference in Amsterdam in
April with 53 members of the legal network attending - 5 coming from outside
of Europe. Feedback from the attendees was very positive, so there'll
certainly be more such conferences in the mid-term future.
2. Producing documentation
Some of the documentation produced by FTF is already online - there's a
documentation section on the website. One type is the documents Shane
produces, such as the useful tips for users of GPL, and same for vendors of
GPL'd software.
Another type is the documents that the network members pass around among
themselves. These are usually procedures, guidelines and other documents
that have existed for a long time internally in their various companies. If
these documents cannot be published, then at least by circulating them
privately in the network, they can expand the knowledge of many free
software lawyers. In the long term, some of these documents might become
publishable or, if allowed by the author(s), will be used for the basis of
our own documents.
3. GPL enforcement
This is the quietest part of FTF's work. We don't go to court, and we don't
go to Slashdot. Compliance is gotten while maintaining relations with the
distributor. Of course, we also work with gpl-violations.org, which does
take people to court. We've been working with them since FTF started in
2006, and earlier this year we agreed to deepen that relationship. And to
reduce problems originating from the manufacturers, the "for users" and "for
vendors" useful tips have been translated and distributed in Chinese and
Korean (they're temporarily offline during a webpage reorganisation).
4. FLA: Fiduciary Licence Agreement
The Fiduciary Licence Agreement is used when a developer wants to grant an
organisation the ability to enforce the licence of the code, and give them
the ability to update the licence of the code - with the limit that the new
licence must also be a free software licence. The developer doesn't lose
their copyright, so they can also enforce and change their licence of their
code, without limits.
This is important for legal maintainability of a project. If a problem is
discovered with the licence, having a central body maintaining the copyright
would allow the project to avoid the difficulty of find all past authors and
getting unanimous agreement on what changes to make to the licence. A big
recent success is that KDE announced that they're going to use it. More good
news is that it should soon be in 10 languages. FSFE has become the legal
guardian for a small number of project, such as OpenSwarm and Bacula, but
that's not our focus for the FLA.
5. Training and consulation
Lastly, Shane visits companies or regions to deliver training courses on
free software licences and legal issues. A skeleton course is online on the
SELF platform: The strategic implementation of Free Software in business.
These courses are educational for legal experts dealing with free software,
and they're also a way for the FTF to be financially sustainable. If you
work for a company that has a legal department and that deal with free
software, you can help the FTF by suggesting to your boss that they get
Shane to deliver a course. With so many big companies profiting from free
software, and with the FTF providing value to so many lawyers for free, it's
only right that the costs of the FTF be covered by these companies rather
than the income we get from the community (through the Fellowship). Another
significant source of funding for which we're grateful is NLnet.
Ok. That what I see the FTF doing. If you read this far, I hope I answered
some questions!
=================
--
Ciarán O'Riordan, +32 477 36 44 19, http://ciaran.compsoc.com/
Support free software, join FSFE's Fellowship: http://fsfe.org
Recent blog entries:
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/status_of_fsfe_…http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/fsfe_s_antitrus…http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/openstreetmap_c…http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/why_european_so…
This was an important month for Free Software. Not only was Software Freedom
Day held (as always) on the 20th, but this years marks the 25th anniversary of
the GNU Project. Celebrations took place across Europe and our Fellows
continued to support Free Software in local areas with enthusiasm and passion.
Other important events took place. On the policy level, FSFE engaged with
representatives of the World Bank to explain why Free Software continues
to be important in both economics and politics. On the legal level, meetings,
speeches, panels and training events continued to build infrastructure for the
future.
Shane, FSFE Zurich Office
1. The GNU's 25th Birthday in Berlin, Germany
2. The smallest unit of freedom: A Fellow - Sean Daly
3. Reach the people - Software Freedom Day in Berlin, Vienna and Utrecht
4. Fellowship events throughout Europe
5. Free Software for World Bank financed projects
6. Freedom Task Force activites - GPLv3 in The Netherlands, panels in Italy and speeches in Berlin and Winterthur
7. European Legal Network special interest group meetings in London and Brussels
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
8. FSCONS 2008, Gothenburg, Sweden (2008-10-24 to 2008-10-26)
9. NLUUG Autumn Conference and CELF Embedded Linux Conference Europe, Ede, Netherlands (2008-11-06 to 2008-11-07)
1. The GNU's 25th Birthday in Berlin, Germany
The GNU-project turned 25 on the 27th of September. FSFE and the Berlin Fellows
were at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to pop a cork and have a party. The
event started at 3pm with some champagne and music to celebrate. A great time
was had by all!
2. The smallest unit of freedom: A Fellow - Sean Daly
"In Europe, Microsoft's foot-dragging in complying with the 2004 Monti
Decision concerned me, and I saw that with very few exceptions, the
mainstream and tech media seemed not to cover fully all that was going on,
in particular the important role of the intervenors like Samba and the
FSFE. I felt that since traditional journalists were missing a vital part
of the story, perhaps it was time for a nontraditional journalist to step
up and report on that part."
Read the whole Fellowship interview: http://fellowship.fsfe.org/interviews
3. Reach the people - Software Freedom Day in Berlin, Vienna and Utrecht
On Saturday the 20th of September, FFII and FSFE's Fellowship group from Berlin
had a barbecue and manned an information booth. At the booth they explained
what Free Software is and why it is important for society. Meanwhile, Vienna's
Fellows celebrate the annual "Software Freedom Day" in a Pub called Pint Pub
in Vienna. The highlight of the event was the performances of the bands "Club
Valat" and "Klaus (from Fadin' to Whiteout)". Finally, in The Netherlands,
Shane Coughlan, Freedom Task Force coordinator at FSFE, delivered a keynote
speech at the Dutch Software Freedom Day event at Liefland College, Utrecht.
4. Fellowship events throughout Europe
The Fellowship Group in Berlin met on the 11th of September at their usual
venue, the New Thinking Store on Tucholsky Strasse. In Vienna the local
Fellowship group invited Shane Coughlan, FTF Coordinator, to deliver a speech
entitled "The Professionalisation of Free Software. Where we are going next."
The new Zurich Fellowship group also had a meeting, once again getting together
at the FSFE Zurich office to discuss ways of spreading the word about Free
Software in Switzerland and to generally have a good time. In Lille, a
Fellowship stand was manned at the "Braderie de Lille" (Lille's flea market)
by our very own French intern, Benjamin Morant, and Rainer Kersten from the
Duesseldorf office.
5. Free Software for World Bank financed projects
FSFE president Georg Greve delivered a course as part of the annual
"Procurement of Information systems in World Bank-Financed Projects"
course at the International Training Center (ITC) of the
International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Turin, Italy. As in the
past years, the course provided insights to the World Bank project
managers on the economic and political basics of Free Software, as
well as practical issues such as licences, business models and best
practice examples.
6. Freedom Task Force activities - GPLv3 in The Netherlands, panels in Italy and speeches in Berlin and Winterthur
Shane Coughlan, Freedom Task Force coordinator at FSFE, hosted a three hour
workshop entitled 'Licensing questions and Legal issues in the light of
GPLv3' for the launch of the GPLv3 at the University of Tilburg, The Netherlands
on the 19th of September. This event is sponsored by NLnet. He also represented
FSFE on the 'NESSI Open Source Working Group' panel at the OSS 2008 conference
in Milan to explain Free Software and the reasons behind Free Software licences.
This was followed by a speech entitled 'Free Software licenses and other
questions' at OSiM World at Berlin on the 17th of September another talk
entitled 'The strategic implementation of Free Software in business' at
the OpenExpo conference in Winterthur, Switzerland, on the 25th of September.
7. European Legal Network special interest group meetings in London and Brussels
FSFE's legal project - the FTF - coordinated a special interest group meeting
in London to discuss business processes and supply chain management. Another
meeting was held in Brussels on the 29th of September to discuss software
patents and other legal issues. These meetings were held for members of the
European Legal Network, and it is hoped that the discussions prompted by
them will lead to greater understanding and support for Free Software by
European legal decision-makers.
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
This is only a partial list, and only contains events where our presence
has been confirmed at time of drafting this newsletter. For a more complete
list of events FSFE will be involved with, please consult
http://www.fsfeurope.org/events/
8. FSCONS 2008, Gothenburg, Sweden (2008-10-24 to 2008-10-26)
For 2008, FSCONS is a collaboration of FSFE, Creative Commons, and Wikimedia
Sweden. There will be three tracks (Free Culture, Free Software, Free Content),
each lead by one of the main organisers. Topics will range from modern kernel
design over citizen journalism all the way across to licensing in the 21st
century.
http://www.fscons.org/
9. NLUUG Autumn Conference and CELF Embedded Linux Conference Europe, Ede, Netherlands (2008-11-06 to 2008-11-07)
The FSFE will be attending the NLUUG Autumn Conference on Thursday 6th
November. This year's theme is 'mobility'. Feel free to come to our booth
and ask about Free Software! Shane Coughlan, Freedom Task Force coordinator
at FSFE, will also deliver talk entitled 'The strategic implementation of
free software in business' at the CELF Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2008
at the same location on the following day, Friday 7th November. The successful
implementation of Free Software requires an understanding of the best policy
and processes applicable to its context. Shane will discuss how FSFE's legal
project and its European Legal Network have engaged with this issue by
producing generic market knowledge for supply and purchasing contracts,
work flow documents and deployment methodology. The location for both
conferences is Hotel en Congrescentrum De Reehorst, Ede, Netherlands.
http://www.nluug.nl/events/nj08/index.html
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
Copyright (C) FSFE. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire
article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
IFSO is officially five years old in January 2009.
How should we celebrate? With a gnu-cake? Any suggestions for a good
speaker from Ireland or Europe who would attract a non-technical audience?
All ideas are welcome!
Thank you
Teresa