Bobulate

The IFOSSLR — the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review — has published issue #3. The IFOSSLR is the only journal dedicated exclusively to Free Software legal issues. While I was the FTF-Coordinator at the FSFE it was great to see the careful legal thought put into all kinds of issues (from trademarks to license assignment to risk assessment). It’s important to have an understanding of the legal issues around Free Software (both development and deployment) that is business compatible. That’s not to say that the interpretation is adapted to suit the desires of business — no, it means that the understanding is formulated in a way that businesses understand. It’s quite important to state cause and effect or obligations and rights carefully so that businesses understand what to do and how to do it right. After all, most Free Software developers want everyone to play by the rules set out in the license.

Sometimes what’s necessary from a business standpoint isn’t what we’d like from a Free Software perspective, but there’s no basis for real complaint. The licenses say what they say (which is why you should be careful in picking a license!), and with a good understanding of what they actually mean, both developers and business using the fruits of that development can get on with what they do. See for instance this bit on the Freecom Music Pal (I have one of those too; it’s OK for listening to Country 105 but the author is right that it’s rather difficult to hack and the firmware is wretched).

The IFOSSLR is available gratis as a PDF, or you can get a printed copy via LuLu. I’d suggest the latter, because legal journals just look really impressive on paper.

As a collaborative publication, the IFOSSLR is always looking for submissions, too. See the Call for Papers for issue #4 for more information. It’s not just for lawyers — the perspective of community and developers on legal issues is really important. The practice of Free Software licensing is an interesting area because there are four (no, wait, six) parties involved: the drafter of the license, the developer using the license, the user of the software released under that license, the community (c.q. peanut gallery) of users of the license, the lawyers for each of the aforementioned parties and the courts. Getting all that to align in harmony is a big task: a task that requires communication and publication. So throw your thoughts into the fray.

The new legal journal IFOSSLR was launched officially yesterday; see also Carlo Piana’s description. For a legal journal, I think we can claim a real success already, with many thousands of downloads. The topics covered include procurement, risk, the Jacobsen case and random comments by myself around Free Software branding. At the launch event, kindly hosted by Berwin Leighton Paisner, I ran into Glyn Moody (a bit on open access journals, too) and Karen Sandler (from the SFLC). It was just like being back on the Canary islands, almost.

I also discovered that after ten hours of exposure to lawyers, I pass out. Sorry about that, Malcolm.