FOSDEM 2013 : Legal Issues DevRoom : CFP

This is the Call for Participation in the FOSDEM 2013 Legal Issues DevRoom

Call for Participation DEADLINE 21 December 2012
Submit your proposal as an email to fosdem-legal@faif.us (see example here).

Speakers will be notified of acceptance by the end of the day US/Eastern on 28 December 2012. We ask submitters to be responsive (if possible) to email the week of 24 December 2012 for follow-up questions regarding their proposals. If you are not available for follow-up questions that week please try to submit your proposal earlier and let us know (so we can try to ask you any questions we may have before then).

This Legal and Policy issues DevRoom is designed to cover topics of Free Software licensing and legal policy. While proposals for introductory topics in this area are welcome, we are specifically seeking proposals on advanced topics in Free Software policy, licensing, trademark, patent and other legal topics.

The goal for this DevRoom is to foster in-depth discussion about complex policy, legal and licensing issues that face the software freedom community today.

Proposals are sought for talks, panel discussions, and guided discussion groups that can investigate these sorts of issues.

Any proposal topic fitting the above description is welcome, but some good topics might include:

  • Copyleft vs. permissive licensing: What is a policy case for copyleft? If so what form should it take?

  • Copyright assignment and contributor license agreements. What are the issues to consider as a project and as a developer?

  • Copyleft licensing models and how they relate to business models. Are there some business models that are license-permissible but bad for community building? On the other side, does your license choice limit or expand your community?

  • Copyleft enforcement and compliance planning from a developer perspective. What is the future of GPL enforcement? Is it working? What is its impact on adoption of copyleft?

  • Copyleft license compatibility. What are the challenges of code base merges when various licenses are in use? How does a compatibility analysis between licenses work?

  • Is GPLv2-only vs. GPLv2-or-later bifurcating the copyleft communities?

Each talk will only be 40 minutes, and 5 minutes reserved for Q&A, although shorter talks with longer Q&A are encouraged. It is highly advisible to define a set of terms and create a set of links giving background information to your subject. Attendees will be encouraged to review this prerequisite material to be well prepared to jump right in to your material.

It is highly unlikely that video gear will be available to cover this event, but all talks will be recorded on audio. Please indicate in your submission if you are willing to be recorded on video and/or audio, and if you're willing to license those recordings CC-By-SA-USA 3.0.

For more background on the Legal Issues DevRoom please check out this archived latest Free as in Freedom oggcast.