Distinguished Open Source Project Will Receive Legal Counsel Regarding Software Licenses, Patents and Copyrights
May 11, 2005
The Wine Project, a prominent open source project that provides a complete implementation of Windows Linux and Unix systems, today announced it has engaged the Software Freedom Law Center to provide legal counsel to its project participants.
“The Software Freedom Law Center embodies the highest degree of expertise on Free and Open Source Software legal issues,” said Alexandre Julliard, maintainer of The Wine Project. “We know that by engaging the Law Center, even more developers and volunteers will take advantage of the benefits of The Wine Project.”
The Wine Project has been a popular and important open source project since 1993. Boasting a development community of more than 600 programmers who have contributed 1.2 million lines of code to the project, Wine provides interoperability for users who want to run Windows applications on open source and free software operating systems.
“As open source projects are increasingly threatened by excessive litigation, technological successes must be partnered with solid legal principles”, said Eben Moglen, chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center. “The Wine Project is a particularly important example. By representing the Wine Project, the Software Freedom Law Center will enable further adoption of the project’s benefits and increase confidence among users”.
The commercial value of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) today is increasing at an exponential rate and changing the playing field for the software industry. To be viable, productive and sustainable, open source projects, such as The Wine Project, need expert legal representation.