Speaking at Practicing Law Institute's Open Source/Free Software 2013

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be speaking at the Practicing Law Institute’s “Open Source and Free Software 2013: Benefits, Risks and Challenges” continuing education for lawyers in San Francisco in December. I did this last year (on a panel with the excellent Mark Radcliffe) and it was a lot of fun.

Topics will include:

• Setting the Stage: An Introduction to “FOSS” and Copyright Concepts

• Open Source Software and its Licenses

• License Enforcement and Avoiding Litigation

• Effective Business Practices in the Open Source Cloud

• Ethics: Conflict and Cooperation in Open Source Projects

• Royalty-Free Patents and Open Standards in Open Source Software

• Hot Topics: Critical Issues and Important Cases in FOSS

I’ll be on a panel on the last topic (“Hot Topics”) with Larry Rosen and Karen Copenhaver. The rest of the speaker lineup is excellent as well:

• Daniel Berlin – Google

• Adam Cohn – Cisco

• Eileen Evans – HP

• Harrison “Buzz” Frahn – Simpson Thatcher

• Gabe Holloway – Leonard, Street and Deinard

• Mario Madden – Microsoft

• Gervase Markham – Mozilla

• Gwyn Murray – Matau Legal Group

• Marc Visnick – Johnson-Laird

I’m afraid it isn’t cheap, but it’s a full day of CLE, and (based on my experience last year) a good way for lawyers not familiar with open source to get up to speed quickly. (It’s also going to be streamed for those who aren’t feeling like pressing the flesh.)