Intellectual Property Law

On Friday I had the privilege of attending the first ever European Licensing & Legal Workshop of Free Software Foundation Europe. Thanks and congratulations to the FSFE Freedom Task Force (FTF) for organising such a successful event.

The Workshop, which was held in Amsterdam, comprised a day of talks, discussion and networking for members of the organisation's European Legal & Technical Network. Some 54 lawyers and licensing experts from across Europe (plus a few who had travelled from Australia and the USA) attended the event, which was chaired by Shane Coughlan, the driving force behind FTF.

To slightly understate the situation, free software & open source (FOSS) is a movement with a degree of politics to it, with factions taking different positions on issues such as what materials should be caught by FOSS licences and if/how software patents should be dealt with. (In fact, it is so factionalised that some would argue you can't even describe it as a single 'movement'.)  More importantly, it is a movement that inspires a huge amount of creative activity, and offers a credible alternative to "proprietary" software, and presents an alternative source of business for IT companies. It was a significant achievement of both FTF and the Workshop attendees that the event focussed on the latter and left out the politics. I will write a more full report on the event later this week.