Legal Developments in Open Source 2011: An Annual Review of the Most Important Legal Updates in OSS

While the use of open source software hit new levels of adoption by development organizations in 2011, there were significant legal changes and related community updates, including:

• Android and app stores
• Protection of API
• Project Harmony FOSS contributor agreements
• Remedies and open source
• The Software Package Data Exchange® (SPDX™)
• Open hardware
• And much more

Gain insight about the top legal developments of 2011 from two of the leading open source legal experts, Karen Copenhaver, Partner at Choate Hall & Stewart and Counsel for the Linux Foundation, and Mark Radcliffe, Partner at DLA Piper and General Counsel for the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

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How to Go Open: Successfully Open Sourcing Internal Software Projects

More and more commercial organizations are looking to participate directly in open source communities and are evaluating how to convert proprietary internal projects into open source community-based projects.

In this webinar, Karen Copenhaver, Partner at Choate, Hall and Stewart, and Mark Radcliffe, Partner at DLA Piper, will highlight key business and legal considerations and share best practices related to this process. They will be joined by Erynn Petersen, SVP of Paid Services and Open Source Engineering at AOL, who will share her corporate experience with moving projects into the open source community. Topics covered will include:

• Deciding to Release
• Choosing the License (GPLv2, GPLv3, Apache, etc)
• Reviewing Code Prior to Release
• Building Your Community
• Managing Contributions

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Understanding the AGPL (GNU Affero Public License)

The GNU Affero Public License version 3 ("AGPL") is one of the newest members of the GPL family of licenses. The Free Software Foundation describes the AGPL as "a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works, specifically designed to ensure cooperation with the community in the case of network server software." It extends the GPLv3 license by giving end-users access to the source code for software accessed over a network.

The AGPL has grown in popularity since it was introduced in 2007, used by almost 400 open source projects. And with the increase in popularity, questions about its use and obligations have grown as well.

To gain a better understanding of the AGPL, its genesis, usage and common questions, please join Black Duck Software with Karen Copenhaver (Choate, Hall and Stewart) and Mark Radcliffe (DLA Piper), two of the software industry's most prominent IP lawyers and domain experts with the GPL.

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Information you need.

Open source software is provided under a diverse set of licenses which set the critical terms for use and redistribution of code. At the same time adoption is growing with over 85% of companies currently using open source software. There have been many high profile lawsuits, making it even more important for companies using open source to be aware of their obligations. More...

Industry leading experts.

Karen Copenhaver

• Partner at Choate Hall & Stewart
• Counsel for the Linux Foundation Listed in Chambers USA, Legal 500 and as a Massachusetts Super Lawyer

Mark Radcliffe

• Partner at DLA Piper
• General Counsel for the Open
  Source Initiative
• Listed in 2009 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the specialty of information technology law

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