The event sessions will be lead by Karen Sandler of the GNOME Foundation and former general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center; Bradley Kuhn, President of the Software Freedom Conservancy and a member of the FSF's Board of Directors, and Donald R. Robertson, III, J.D., the FSF's Copyright and Licensing Associate.

The event is aimed at legal professionals and law students. Registration for the event is open to the public at https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/event/register?reset=1&id=15.

"We're looking forward to helping current and future lawyers get comfortable working with the GNU General Public License and other free software licenses, so that they can expand their practices and address their clients' concerns," said FSF executive director John Sullivan.

The seminar is scheduled for the day after the Free Software Foundation's LibrePlanet 2014 conference, an annual conference that brings together software developers, policy experts, activists and computer users to learn skills, share accomplishments and face challenges to software freedom.

More information about the event can be found at the event page.

About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at https://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.

Presenters

Bradley M. Kuhn

Bradley M. Kuhn is President of the Software Freedom Conservancy and on the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Kuhn began his work in the software freedom movement as a volunteer in 1992, when he became an early adopter of the GNU/Linux operating system, and began contributing to various FLOSS projects. He worked during the 1990s as a system administrator and software developer for various companies, and taught AP Computer Science at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. Kuhn's non-profit career began in 2000, when he was hired by the FSF. As FSF's Executive Director from 2001-2005, Kuhn led FSF's GPL enforcement, launched its Associate Member program, and invented the Affero GPL. From 2005-2010, Kuhn worked as the Policy Analyst and Technology Director of the Software Freedom Law Center. Kuhn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in Computer Science from Loyola University in Maryland, and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati. Kuhn's Master's thesis discussed methods for dynamic interoperability of FLOSS languages. Kuhn has a blog and a microblog as @bkuhn on identi.ca.

Karen M. Sandler

Karen M. Sandler is the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. She is known for her advocacy for free software, particularly for software safety on medical devices. Prior to joining GNOME, she was General Counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. Karen continues to do pro bono legal work with SFLC and serves as an officer of the Software Freedom Conservancy. She is also pro bono General Counsel of QuestionCopyright.org and an advisor to the Ada Initiative. Before joining SFLC, Karen worked as an associate in the corporate departments of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in New York and Clifford Chance in New York and London. Karen received her law degree from Columbia Law School in 2000, where she was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. Karen received her bachelors degree in engineering from The Cooper Union. She is a recipient of the O'Reilly Open Source Award.

Donald R. Robertson, III

Donald R. Robertson, III, is the Copyright and Licensing Associate for the Free Software Foundation, where he has worked for over five years as part of the FSF's Licensing & Compliance Lab. He is actively involved in the FSF's compliance work, and is one of the FSF's primary representatives in conversations with companies whose employees want to contribute to free software projects. Donald is a graduate of the New England School of Law, where he was the managing editor of the New England Law Review, and interned for the Hon. William G. Young at the federal district courthouse in Boston. He received his bachelors degree in philosophy and history from Cornell College, and is admitted to the Massachusetts bar.

Media Contacts

Joshua Gay
Licensing & Compliance Manager
Free Software Foundation
+1 (617) 542 5942
licensing@fsf.org

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