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Conservancy Blog
Displaying posts tagged conferences
Conservancy Visiting the US South — Twice in October!
by on October 4, 2018
Both Bradley and Deb will be in Raleigh, NC for All Things Open. Our Distinguished Technologist, Bradley M. Kuhn will be presenting an “Introduction to Copyleft and the GPL” on October 22nd at 4:15 PM. This talk is great for both beginners and enthusiasts!
Join us for a Conservancy supporters “pub night” on October 22nd at 7pm in Raleigh. We'll be at Flying Saucer, located at 328 West Morgan Street. Expect snacks, friends and as always some interesting software freedom licensing chat!
We'll also be in the Expo Hall all day on Monday and Tuesday, so swing by with your praise, your questions and desire for stickers. We could use a few friendly booth volunteers to share the free software love at ATO, if that sounds like you, please get in touch!
The following week, you'll be able to catch our Director of Community Operations, Deb Nicholson, at LISA in Nashville, Tenessee. Deb starts off the conference on Tuesday, October 30th, at 9 AM with a keynote titled, “Make It Official: In Praise of Official Programs for Diversity & Inclusion” where she'll talk about how leadership and funding can positively impact your diversity efforts. You can also catch us in the Expo Hall on Monday afternoon or Tuesday at midday — please let us know if you can help us with the booth at LISA!
Connect with the Conservancy in Portland during CLS/OSCON
by on July 11, 2018
First up, we've got folks presenting at the Community Leadership Summit on Saturday and Sunday before OSCON. The Community Leadership Summit is free so you can join us there, even if you're local and aren't planning to buy a ticket to OSCON.
Saturday, July 14th:
Deb Nicholson, our recently joined Director of Community Outreach leads a conversation on,"Handling Big Changes" at 11:45am.Sunday, July 15th:
Sage Sharp, a member of the Outreachy project leadership committee as well as a consultant to Outreachy and founder of Otter Tech which help companies with diversity, will be speaking. At 2pm Sage will tackle, "The Nth Pull Request: Encouraging Intermediate Contributors."
Our Distinguished Technologist, Bradley Kuhn will be talking about our fiscal sponsorship work at 3pm, "There’s No Place Like Home: How Do We Provide Organizational Homes to FLOSS Communities?"
Monday, July 16th:
Join us from 7pm -10pm at McMenamin's Broadway Pub! The address is 1504 NE Broadway St, and it's about a 20 minute walk (or an 11 minute bus ride) from the Oregon Convention Center. All four of our full-time employees will be in attendance. There is nothing we'd like more than to spend an evening talking about the future of free software and its toughest problems with supporters and friends. Light snacks will be provided.
Wednesday and Thursday, July 18 & 19:
Once OSCON starts, we'll be on the expo floor all day Wednesday (10am-7pm) and Thursday (10am - 4pm). Swing by for stickers or "flossip" (or both.) Please help us by volunteering to help us on the expo floor. In person conversations are the single best way to get new people excited about our work. Let us know if you can help out by committing to a few hours of booth time. We'd really appreciate it!
Deb will give a short talk on Wednesday in the Open Source Initiative's Anniversary track. Deb speaks at 4:15pm about the history of the free software movement, Free Software: Our Past and Our Future". Happy 20th Anniversary OSI!
Finally on the last day of OSCON, Deb will be talking about, "Blockchain: The Ethical Considerations" at 1:45pm in Portland 256. If you're in the area, we hope you'll find time to say hello, find out what's happening with your favorite Conservancy initiatives or tell us what you've been up to. Questions about our time in Portland? Feel free to email or swing by #conservancy on freenode.net
Sandler Invited to Korean Open Source Conference
by on June 21, 2018
The schedule includes a mix of talks on interacting with open source licenses and the evolving undertanding of fair use in the digital age. Karen will give an overview of historic GPL enforcement by Conservancy and FSF as well as other community-focused efforts and discuss how adherence to the Principles of Community Oriented GPL-Enforcement has led to the various initiatives in the industry to reduce risk for corporate actors.
Sandler gives her talk at 4:30 (local time) on the 28th. Swing by or tell your friends in Seoul!
Conservancy at LibrePlanet 2018
by on March 22, 2018
March 24-25th hundreds of free software activists, community managers, hackers, legal experts, and all around fans will meet in Cambridge, MA for LibrePlanet 2018, the Free Software Foundation's annual conference and members meeting.
In addition to everything else happening there, Conservancy's own Bradley Kuhn, Brett Smith, Karen Sandler, and Denver Gingerich -- our part-time compliance engineer -- will all be speaking.
Topics covered include copyleft, the usibility of the GPL, medical devices, and free software in business.
State of the copyleft union
Bradley Kuhn, Distinguished Technologist
The license-importance divide seems almost generational: the older generation cares about licenses, and the younger generation does not. Yet, the historical focus on licensing in FLOSS, while occasionally prone to pedantry to a degree only developers can love, stemmed from serious governance considerations regarding how community members interact.
Copyleft was invented to solve the many problems of project governance, assuring the rights of users and creating equal footing for all contributors. The licensing infrastructure today also has increased in complexity, with proprietary relicensing business models, excessive use of CLAs, and tricky clauses on top of existing licenses.
Given this climate, how do we understand if copyleft is succeeding? This talk explores historical motivations and modern reactions to these licensing matters, and digs into understanding how policies have impacted Free Software communities for both good and ill.
A usability study of the GPL
Brett Smith, Director of Strategic Initiatives
We want software creators to use the GPL and its cousin licenses. We also know that people make mistakes in the process, or don’t even try because they’ve heard it’s "too complicated." Just as we do when we develop software, we would do well to study these failures and use them as opportunities to improve the usability of the GPL. This talk aims to start that process by identifying some known problems and considering some possible solutions. (None of these solutions are a new version of the license!)
Copyleft, Diversity & Critical Infrastructure
Karen Sandler, Executive Director
GPL enforcement and Outreachy are the two most visible and controversial programs that Conservancy undertakes. In this talk, Karen will explore how the programs fit together in the context of software freedom generally. Karen will review her work around medical devices and critical infrastructure and show how seemingly disparate initiatives fit into a single advocacy narrative.
Freedom, devices, and health
Mad Price Ball, Rachel Kalmar, Dana Lewis, Karen Sandler
When it comes to health, freedom is literally visceral. How do the principles of freedom apply to the devices used for medicine, health, and wellness? Moderated by Mad Price Ball, a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, this panel introduces leaders that bridge industry, community, and individual experiences. Rachel Kalmar (Berkman Klein Center), uses her experience with sensors and wearables to confront how devices and their data interact with a larger ecosystem. Dana Lewis (OpenAPS) connects us to health communities, and her work with the Nightscout project and patient-led efforts in type 1 diabetes. Karen Sandler (Software Freedom Conservancy) shares her experience as an individual with a device close to her heart: a defibrillator she uses, as a matter of life or death -- and she cannot get the source code to it. Join us to learn about how freedom matters for devices in health.
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In business: Keeping free software sustainable
Denver Gingerich, Compliance Engineer
Starting a business is a big decision, and choosing to share its results with the world is perhaps bigger still. Denver started JMP early last year, and faced this very choice, deciding to release all of JMP's code as free software and to charge money to use the instance he runs. In this session, Denver will describe why he chose to build a free software business, and will discuss the details of the business model he arrived at, alongside other business models for free software companies.
Few contributors are paid to work on free software today, and far fewer are paid by non-profit organizations (or even by small businesses). It is imperative for us to explore how we can sell free software, especially through non-profits and small businesses, so we can bring freedom to more people and, just as importantly, build sustainable futures for our contributors.
More information is available on the LibrePlanet 2018 website.
Organized by the FSF, LibrePlanet is focused entirely on user freedom. We hope to see you there, in our talks or at the Conservancy booth in the exhibit hall.
