GNOME retains SFLC

It is good to see that the GNOME Foundation has officially announced that we’re retaining the Software Freedom Law Center to help us with the Foundation’s legal issues. I’ve been tangentially involved, since it is trivially easy for me to swing by the SFLC offices, and I’m excited that we’ve got more smart, clueful people coming in to help with our difficult questions. My particular personal hope is that they can help us straighten out our trademark policy, but I’m sure their domain expertise will be useful in other areas as well.

I think it is worth noting that this is not a repudiation of our long-standing pro bono relationship with the excellent folks over at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich Rosati. We see SFLC’s expertise in free software law and free software community dynamics as a complement to WSGR’s skills, not a replacement. If anything, I hope that by giving us more incentive to focus attention on our legal issues, the relationship with SFLC will let us expand and deepen our relationship with WSGR. WSGR has done excellent work for us in the past and will continue doing work for us, and everyone involved in GNOME should be grateful and appreciative for the time and effort they’ve put in over the past several years.