Legal policies can have unintended collateral effects on the growth and adoption of community open source projects. This was presented to the Legal DevRoom during FOSDEM 2016

1. Community Impacts of Legal
Decisions
Legal Policy as a Barrier to Entry
Dave Neary
SDN/NFV Community Strategy
30 January 2016

2. The role of lawyers

3. Legal decisions have
(unintended) consequences

4. (Most) Developers don't care
about the Law

5. Any time a developer
has to care about the law...
It's a bug

6. INSERT DESIGNATOR, IF NEEDED6
License choice
• “Friendly for business” vs “Friendly to proprietary forks”
• Viral vs reciprocal
• Fitting with your ecosystem (interoperability, identity)
• Factoring in the cost of enforcement

7. INSERT DESIGNATOR, IF NEEDED7
Copyright licensing agreements
• First contact with project is
paperwork
• Many developers will not sign
them
• Creates an uneven playing field
• Alternatives: DCO, Mozilla
Committers Agreement,
organisational agreements

8. INSERT DESIGNATOR, IF NEEDED8
Patent threats
• Chilling effects: G729, GIF,
Bitcoin
• Ignorance is bliss
• The role of patent
promises/patent licenses in
copyright license

9. INSERT DESIGNATOR, IF NEEDED9
Trademark
• Communities feel like they share
ownership of the brand
• Identity is a delicate and complex
thing
• Alternative approaches:
Abandonment, CM, incremental
approach
• http://fossmarks.org

10. Join us at http://www.opnfv.org
Thank you!