October 31, 2018

The Software Freedom Law Center is excited to welcome you to our 14th Anniversary Fall Conference cohosted by Columbia Law School on Friday, November 2nd, 2018. Below, please find our complete conference program as well as information pertaining to CLE credits. We invite counsel, developers, enterprise users, and other members of free and open source software (FOSS) communities to join us once again for our free annual conference to explore legal issues surrounding FOSS.

Location: Jerome Greene Hall Room 103, Columbia Law School, 435 West 116th Street, New York, New York 10027

Date and Time: November 2, 2018, 8:30am to 6:00pm

We have assembled what we think will be a very lively and interesting program, which you can find summarized below.

The ideas are free as in freedom, and—as always—attendance, continental breakfast, lunch, and the various drinks are free as in beer.

Though the conference is free of charge, it is invitation only. If you have not yet received an invitation from us and would like to attend, please email rsvp@softwarefreedom.org requesting one.

NYS Bar members seeking free CLE credit should contact mrw@softwarefreedom.org for information.

Social Media and Liveblog: Please join the discussion about our conference using the hashtag #SFLC2018 on Twitter, Mastodon, and LinkedIn. We will be liveblogging the conference on our Twitter account.

Livestream: This event will be audio and video recorded and livestreamed. Those unable to attend can follow the conference livestream. On the day of the conference, you can watch the livestream here.

Conference Program:

08:30am Registration, Coffee

09:00am Welcome by Mishi Choudhary of the Software Freedom Law Center

09:10am-10:40am SESSION I: Keynotes

• 9:10am-10:00am Keynote Address - “Google’s Philosophy of FOSS” - Google’s open source compliance philosophy briefly. A talk on topics from Google’s open case book and a discussion on copyright infringement versus contractual breach, joint versus collective works in open source, and how the distinction informs policy.

  • By Max Sills of Google

• 10:00am-10:50am Keynote Address - “Journalism for an Open Source World”

  • By Julia Angwin of The Markup

10:50am-12:30pm SESSION II: Peace and Its Dividends

• 10:50am-11:40am “Current Legal Issues in FOSS” - The current state of FOSS licensing and patents is rapidly changing. Where were we yesterday and where are we today?

  • Moderated by Eben Moglen and Mishi Choudhary of the Software Freedom Law Center, featuring the following talks:
    • GPL Cooperation and Commitment, by David Levine of Red Hat
    • Open Chain, by Dave Marr of Qualcomm
    • Linux Foundation Update, by Mike Dolan of the Linux Foundation
    • Patents, by Keith Bergelt of Open Invention Network and Nicolas Schifano of Microsoft

• 11:40am-12:30pm “License Restrictions and Commons Clause” - Additional restrictions modifying existing FOSS licenses are becoming noticeably popular. Is this license proliferation under a new guise? Does it help or hurt business models around FOSS?

  • With Jim Wright of Oracle, Heather Meeker of O’Melveny & Myers, Karen Copenhaver of the Linux Foundation, Richard Fontana of Red Hat, Sarah Ward of MongoDB, and Eben Moglen and Mishi Choudhary of the Software Freedom Law Center

12:30pm Lunch

02:00pm-03:40pm SESSION III: Automotive FOSS

• 02:00pm-03:40pm “Where Are We Going With Cars?” - As manufacturers and Tier One suppliers move rapidly towards FOSS adoption in vehicles and components, traditional suspicion of copyleft meets the realities of a new form of software supply chain. Experiments in autonomy are demonstrating both promises and problems in the new automotive software ecology. An update from multiple viewpoints: where are we going, and who is in charge of how we get there?

  • With Andrew Sinclair of Canonical USA, Ltd., Jeremiah Foster of GENIVI and Luxoft, Leilani H. Gilpin of MIT, Daniel Patnaik of Audi, and Eben Moglen and Mishi Choudhary of the Software Freedom Law Center

03:40pm Coffee Break

03:55pm-04:45pm SESSION IV: FOSS, Blockchain, and AI

Everyone’s doing it. Companies that have not been traditional generators of free and open source software are now major contributors and stakeholders in FOSS Blockchain and AI projects. Companies that have built empires in proprietary software are doing AI development as FOSS. In this session, we discuss the centrality of FOSS to Blockchain and AI and the legal issues that will arise as we go on.

• 03:55pm-04:20pm “Hyperledger” - Hyperledger and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance joined forces to drive mass adoption of blockchain technology. What does that mean for developers? How are these open source communities working together?”

  • With James Waugh of Bidio and Mishi Choudhary of the Software Freedom Law Center
• 04:20pm-04:45pm “Why FOSS is Essential to AI”
  • With Scott Nicholas of the Linux Foundation, Susan Malaika - Senior Technical Staff in IBM’s Digital Business Group, and Mishi Choudhary and Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center

04:45pm-05:35pm SESSION V: The End of One Era, the Start of Another

• 04:45pm-05:35pm “The New Consensus and Its Aftermath” - What is this new consensus about the open source model of developing software? What were the legal models of the past and how have they evolved now and for the future? What came before it? Professor Moglen explains what will come after.

  • By Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center

End of Day

Columbia Law School has been certified by the New York State Continuing Legal Education (CLE) Board as an Accredited Provider of CLE programs. Under New York State CLE regulations, this live non-transitional CLE Program will provide 7 credit hours that can be applied toward the Areas of Professional Practice requirement. This CLE credit is awarded only to New York attorneys for full attendance of the Program in its entirety. Attorneys attending only part of the program are not eligible for partial credit. Attendance is determined by an attorney’s sign-in and sign-out, as shown in the Conference registers. On final sign-out, attorneys should also submit their completed Evaluation Form, provided at the Conference. Please note the NYS Certificates of Attendance will be sent to the email address as it appears in the register unless otherwise noted there.

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