Bradley Kuhn Delivered Copyleft Keynote at FOSDEM

Emphasized how compliance empowers developers

February 13, 2017

At FOSDEM last week, Conservancy’s Distinguished Technologist Bradley Kuhn delivered a keynote “Understanding The Complexity of Copyleft Defense.” The speech reviews the history of GPL enforcement efforts, pointing out development projects such as OpenWRT and SamyGo that began thanks to GPL compliance work. Kuhn focused in particular on how copyleft compliance can further empower users and developers as more kinds of devices run GPL’d software, and he concluded his remarks urging developers to take control of their own work by demanding to hold their own copyrights, using mechanisms such as Conservancy’s ContractPatch initiative.

FOSDEM is attended by thousands of people and is one of the FOSS community’s premier conferences. FOSDEM is a community-oriented, not-for-profit conference organized by volunteers. You can watch Kuhn’s full keynote on their site or our YouTube channel.