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What Can a Lawyer Do For Open Source?
zolltron writes "I have a friend who went to law school. He really enjoyed intellectual property law, and he seems to genuinely regret that he didn't end up as an IP lawyer. But, what's done is done, and he's not going to radically change career trajectories now. But, I think he might be interested in volunteering a little of his time if there was an interesting project he could get behind. Computer folks are always trying to figure out how to get involved in open source even if it won't be their full time job. So, now I ask you Slashdot, how can my friend use his expertise to help an open source project?"
Perhaps they could use some help?
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
It would help to know what field of law he is in.
Well, you say your friend went to law school. However, you don't mention whether or not he passed the Bar Exam and/or if he is currently practicing law. Both of these pieces of information would probably be helpful
among other things, the lawyer friend can tell you exactly how to register the copyrights on your software.
He can post here and end his rants with "IAAL".
The project which advocates open source governance has been trying over the years to coalesce into a formal organization, but desperately needs a lawyer to figure out how. A normal non-profit can just put together a board of directors and organize in their home country. But Metagovernment has two huge problems with this: first, they cannot/will-not be controlled by a small group of empowered individuals (completely goes against their core principles), and second they are explicitly not aligned with any nation or national interest. See their page on the issue: http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Startup/Organization
No, it is not open source software, but seeing as open source governance is derived from the principles of free and open source software, I thought it may be of interest. Especially since the need for a lawyer here is really profound.
I bet they have all sorts of odd research and writing they could use help.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
You first. I'm sure there'll be somebody to defend you.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
One thing that I wish I did was go through law school so I could litigate Internet-based rights. For example, a recent story on /. covered a case that went to trial that was basically about freedom of speech.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/12/29/1929228/Court-Rules-Website-Doesnt-Have-To-Remove-Defamatory-Comments
If I were in your friends' shoes, I would open a private practice and tailor it to the needs of those who need their rights protected online.
You should also suggest that your friend checkout the YRO section on /. or even groklaw.net ... these pages should give your friend an idea or two on how to get involved by reading about what's happening.
as carpenter, railroad worker, builder, engeneer, pilot...
generally, the less we have of people who mind others businness the better we fare...
tell him to throw himself off a bridge or something. I know he means well, but lawyers are a major part of the problem this litigious society has. Whichever side they're on, in the end they're usually not helping anybody but their own greedy profiteering selves.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Wouldn't the US be open source government since all of the laws, regulations, and charters for government be openly available? That is essentially "the code".
The open street map project is currently planning to change their license from the established CC-by-SA (GPL-like), to something new and untested called the ODbL (LGPL-like).
IANAL but I play one on the internet and I've read the thing, and both it and the new contributer agreement are a mess. A terrible mess. Apparently it's been looked at by a real lawyer, but I still see much sloppiness which translates to loop holes many an evil company could drive trucks through.
Task: review the two documents pro-bono and post analysis & suggestions for improvement to the osm-talk list before it's too late! Time is short and I'd hate to see a good project destroy itself.
There are a number of us who happily chip into gpl-violations.org - hopefully, it sometimes leads to resolutions of GPL-based legal issues, but fascinating for discussion too.
Education: I enjoy talking / lecturing about issues related to open source / Free software, problems I perceive with copyright, issues around the commons and the public domain etc. - education activities, helping both lawyers and interested members of the general public. I also like writing about open source topics, from a legal point of view - dispelling FUD, or highlighting areas of actual risk, can be beneficial. Even contributing to your local LUG might be helpful.
Contributing to project documentation - perhaps not strictly legal-related, but, as a lawyer, I hope I can communicate clearly. Since documentation is often considered secondary to code in open source projects, yet is important, I felt I could contribute.
Pro bono work - very occasionally, a pro bono project comes up which needs open source advice, and I'll happily take on those. If you have a local pro bono centre, which has a wider remit than housing / family / private client issues, then, you might be able to register there and offer guidance. I would not hold out any hope of it being a regular source of projects, but perhaps worth a try.
Good luck making a fork.
It is open in that it is readable, but it does not have other characteristics of FOSS: namely, it is pretty darn difficult for a random person with a good idea to contribute code and have it committed to the trunk. Try it some time. :)
I am sure PJ would appreciate the help.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
http://twit.tv/twil & http://twit.tv/floss
Your friend, if he's really interested, could contact the FSF or EFF or OSI and offer his services. I'm sure such groups could always use an extra lawyer.
My organization (which publishes OSS) is doing the same thing, and is using a law student to help coalesce the group into a formal entity (of which there are many types each with their own pros and cons). I'm sure there are many organizations in the same condition, and having someone do the (arduous) research to formalize the entity will help in procuring grants and other sources of funding that aren't available to informal entities.
Slartibartfast:"Is that your robot?"
Marvin:"No, I'm mine."
I don't think anyone would mind if you branched the 'code', so long as you don't steal the tools/resources required to compile/execute.
States that have the initiative/proposition process fit that mold. Still must be approved, but any random joe can write up a bill and submit it as long as it gets enough votes.
The project which advocates open source governance has been trying over the years to coalesce into a formal organization, but desperately needs a lawyer to figure out how. A normal non-profit can just put together a board of directors and organize in their home country. But Metagovernment has two huge problems with this: first, they cannot/will-not be controlled by a small group of empowered individuals (completely goes against their core principles), and second they are explicitly not aligned with any nation or national interest. See their page on the issue: http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Startup/Organization
No, it is not open source software, but seeing as open source governance is derived from the principles of free and open source software, I thought it may be of interest. Especially since the need for a lawyer here is really profound.
You're looking for "bearer bonds" they are obnoxious because they are taxed every time the change hands, but that's not a huge issue. Im afraid to say your second problem isnt so easy to resolve by any means other than moving the goal posts. The Corporate charter is a government subsidy. It's legitimacy is only as strong as the nation who issued it recognizes it(like fiat currency). You should either proceed as true revolutionaries undetterred by recognition and forget the corporate charter & begin issuing your own crypto signed dgc bearer bonds. Or you should suck it up and go with government corporate charter. Honestly, the project is meaningless without the maturity to do the former imho. You might as well use the proceeds from your IPO to stockpile dgc and bitcoins to back your bonds. In the corporate world, its not the color of your government paper but the size of your warchest which determines the victor. Might makes right, and lawers are the modern day gun slingers. Public relations and jury nulification are cheaper forms of jury tampering than hiring a silver tongue imho.
Kill himself
A few things can be done simply by being a lawyer at all.
- Recruiting other lawyers, including IP folks, at bar association and other lawyer-only events. Not to mention posting ads in bar association newsletters and hosting events at bar association buildings and finding and encouraging relevant CLE events.
- Writing readily available and current guides to open source for the rest of us, especially the differences between the GPL and other licenses. A good chart of those differences would be golden. Again, especially if kept current AND READILY FINDABLE INLINE. not just in theory, but in case law and in terms of the corporate and institutional moves that could be learned just fine by spending enough time following links from right here on /. and following up on things like Westlaw.
Even not being an IP lawyer, (s)he's still better equipped than most, if only from access to Lexis-Nexis, to build an educated view of what the issues are, for example how companies can use open source and still stay in compliance both with those terms and confidentiality requirements of contractors. Or what code can pass on in commercial products that then use that open source code, etc.
- This isn't open source as such, but there's also a real need for more guides to fair use in general. I've looked high and low and nobody seems to keep a current site about what can and can't legally be photographed, for example. I *do* know that lots of the regulations about taking pictures of private facilities, for example, are bullshit. As in in conflict with the law. But try explaining that without cases and regulation, right down to number, on paper right there when some goon is sent out to grab your camera because you were taking pictures through the chain link fence.
Same for the ever-changing limits of TSA-controlled areas. When a woman can be kept from flying for "unusual contours of the buttocks" and supposedly have no legal recourse, well, looks like we could use some help there to me. Same goes for sampling music or the many related fields. And again, actual case citations and regulations listed by number and category.
Just being able to "presort" is of value, if only to help people in trouble find an IP lawyer who can finish the job. The EFF is great but they ain't everybody, esp. since it can help to have a local lawyer for some things.
- Another possibility is to get involved in helping open-source related organizations get legal standing as non-profits and fund and charter endowments. There are plenty of open source projects that could qualify as non-profits and when I talk to them about it they look vaguely interested but they have neither the skills nor the understanding of how it could help them out to actually get it done. Endowments? Don't get me started. For example, New York's ABC No Rio computer center has hosted many events and teach-ins that help open source and they're always short of help of many kinds. Same for many Free Skools. There are at least fifty infoshops in this country that could do the same IF they were more stable and somebody did the work of getting the right people together in the right place on a repeating basis. Lawyer as yenta is a role that goes back centuries. It's not what people think of as a lawyer's role but it works. Especially since most lawyers can quietly and unobtrusively slip in the twenty bucks now and again that can (absurdly enough) be what stands between a project getting moving and five more fucking meetings over the course of a year to "achieve consensus".
Ya see, a lot of this is about culture. Ask Autumn Wiggins about the work she's doing right now to bring open source tools to the crafting world. Or all of us who simply never took R.M. Stallman as seriously as we could have because, well, he doesn't listen, doesn't move beyond his circles and, at least in my day, didn't bathe. And lawyers are, in their very different way, trained as hackers. As masters of social engineering. Of getting institutions to do what they want through the
Would you or that law student be so kind as to post even a brief summary of your findings to the Metagovernment list server. Or if that is too much trouble, perhaps to the relevant page on the wiki. Or failing either of those, maybe here?
Thanks!
Shouldn't a lawyer already have the resources to find any area of law he want to practice in? Like most professionals those guys should have good network of people. Why sink to asking people who typically aren't in the area of law?
I just made a fork of the code right now.
It runs fine, but with only one citizen(me) in the execution environment I can see a lot of rules that never fire.
Perhaps I shouldn't call it an execution environment.
There is one area where prosecuting GPL violations is, at present, completely ineffective, and it's across the non-PRC / PRC international barrier. As I understand it, the rules are that it is necessary to either be a Chinese National or have a Chinese Company in order to prosecute Copyright Violation. However, i have heard that there is a Law Firm in Bristol who manage to successfully prosecute Copyright and other violations in China.
It would be extremely useful for someone to help the Software Freedom Law Centre to be able to successfully pursue GPL Copyright Violations against Chinese Factories. Not least is, as Neil mentions, the fact that it would simply be useful to help out AT ALL with the sheer overwhelming number of GPL violations cases. The busybox Copyright holders alone have a list which as of last month was well over 300 separate cases which they have to actively double-check and then pursue.
Even if you're not eligible for joining their team as a lawyer (which isn't necessarily a given), you can still volunteer or at least network with them.
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
There are dozens of organisations around the world who use the Internet to ensure Free Access to Law (Google '+LII +"Montreal Declaration"' for more about the movement). Many of these Legal Information Institutes require the assistance of legal experts in selecting, vetting and editing their online materials. There are new ones starting up right now in Western Africa, for example.
Access to online legal materials is a fundamentally important way to ensure rule of law and to help level the playing field between the state, established interests and the little guy. In my region, it's been extremely effective in helping people to understand the ways the laws are written (i.e. the way things should be) and to compare them to the way things actually are. It's not a panacea, but it's a pretty important tool in helping people protect their rights, both online and in meatspace.
If your friend is interested, have him contact the Cornell School of Law for details. Alternatively, he can contact me through my website.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
sorry i didn't notice that the question was "what can i do for open source" and the first thing your friend can do is read rms essays on why that should be "free software" (more accurately "software libre" in french). the difference really does matter: anyone - even microsoft - can claim that "access to source code is open" (for $USD 1m, and if you use it in any projects or products, then they will sue the f88* out of you. but it's STILL an "open source" license, because the source code is "open", right?)
Maybe getting in touch with our fellow slashdotter NewYorkCountryLawyer (Ray Beckerman) could be a good idea?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
He can volunteer to help RunwayFinder.com
This was a great flight-planning tool, until patent-troll FlightPrep threatened to sue for over $3M. The allegedly infringed-upon patent? -- linking maps together (yes, like Google maps).
RunwayFinder's owner has considered open-sourcing his site, but now he has other more important things on his mind...(like not losing everything he owns to this lawsuit....)
Groklaw does a lot of good, too.
Wow. What projects couldn't use a lawyer. Liability, patents, license (GPL etc) violations, legal documentation, etc etc.
I could think of plenty of FOSS that probably could use a bit of legal assistance. Heck, how about offering a cheap legal advice session - or maybe a free seminar - every now and then, for up-and-coming programmers on FOSS projects?
The EFF provides all sorts of legal services to deserving projects. I thing volunteering tor them would be a fantastic use of time.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Create viral a form to make a patent viral, like GPL.
Your company uses the patent, then your patents cant be enforced against free (or any) software.
As a programmer/developer, I'm used to libraries of code and snippets, and cross-integrating and documentation. But when it comes time for me to write contracts for projects with clients and such, I get to start from scratch, every time. GPL and the like exist for code use, but that's not business related.
I've always wanted the equivalent of GPL for business. Where I can have a contract between my business and my client that also has a 3 to 5 character letterism common enough to be familiar to non-computer-oriented clients. It would really solve the whole negotiating a contract challenge of any large project.
I imagine a set for each industry (software, grocery, marketing, etc), a subset for each type of project (software, service, product, etc), a subset for each bias (favouring the client, favouring the provider, mutually neutral, etc), a few peripheral features (royalties, bonuses, minimums, etc), et cetera.
It's not open-source-computer-code, it's open-source-legal-contracts.
The big advantage being that parties using such contracts don't need to read everything thoroughly for eight weeks with their lawyers, because those lawyers would quickly become familiar with these things, and these things would be backed by the international association for open legal contracts -- or perhaps one with a more legible letterism.
your "friend". I think we all know who the real lawyer is here :D
It's a high-impact project, so it has some extra controls - to get write access to the repository, you have to be a special class of user called a "Congressman", and all code commits must be approved by a committee called "the Senate", and ultimately the final approval is vested in the super-user known as "the President". The people using your code get to determine if you keep write access every so often.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Don't feed the troll... c'mon now.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Never posted one of these before but it is the most insightful comment in the thread and deserves to be seen.
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
Or, if you must feed a troll, feed a creative one, not a rambling lunatic who keeps posting the same dull observation.
Michael Kristopelt = stagnated.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
sic Ellison of Oracle and Darl McBride of Hell on each other.
open source, and mankind, can only benefit with those two alleycats tied tail to tail and tossed over a high-tension power line, to shred each other.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
must apologize to both alleycats and Hell for the associations above.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I have a friend who was all set to become an IP lawyer, but then they found out her parents were married.
I was shopping in New York last week, it was so cold I saw a lawyer with her hands in her own pockets.
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.
EFF is looking for lawyers with experience in copyright litigation to help fight Righthaven.
The relevant snippet from the web site:
Are you a law geek?
* Be a Licensing Volunteer. Help us answer the many questions we receive every day at the FSF regarding the use and abuse of free software licenses. If you are interested, write to licensing@fsf.org and tell us a bit about your background, both legal and with the free software community, if you are interested. Please also run through the GPL quiz and let us know how you do.
As an aside, if you are *neither* a lawyer nor a programmer and you're still interested in supporting open source projects, there are lots of ways to get involved. This includes those with an interest in art, linguistics, writing, testing, organizing/assisting at public functions, etc. Tons of very different approaches. Check out the link above for more info.
Good luck making a fork.
The US and most of the British commonwealth DID - it's called english common law.
It's a form of law that dates back to when a country separated from English rule, and allows the government to have a base set of laws to build upon, rather than having to make laws up after a potential crime has been committed.
Some countries have not changed a lot of their laws and still fall back on english common law on occasion.
By the way, IANAL, I just like the odd bit of history and law.
Brand me as a troll, but lawyers have no business in the computer industry. Stop posting legal articles. Stop posting lawyer articles. We are hackers. We laugh at silly rules. And the self important fools that make them. As if chanting magic words puts back to shovel and gets the manure out of the barn.
It would be more useful it lawyers stood for free speech and my rights once in a while.
Lawyers against TSA. Lawyers against a police state. Lawyer for smokers. Lawyers for the right to smoke and drink in a bar.
Lawyers to investigate the mortgage crisis. Lawyers to take down the zombie banks.
Lawyers against off shoring. Lawyers against Trillion Dollar wars.
Lawyers for Freedom. Lawyers for Human RIghts.
Lawyers that SPONTANEOUSLY give something back to the community,
Lawyers against executive orders. Lawyers for the Constitution.
Lawyers that investigated some rotten evil doers in high places, put the hurt on some high crimes.
Like where the missing billions went in Iraq.
Lawyers that look out for the little people, not just their masters with the megadollars.
When you lawyers got all that cleaned up, then we can talk about software.
Until then, us open sources, us computer nerds, us hackers great and small will continue to do fine all by ourselves.
Hmmm,how about suing the hell out of the apple,novell,microsoft deal! Takin our patents,krap...
cower behind your chosen pseudonym some more, feeb.
you're completely pathetic.
you're an ignorant hypocrite.
score 0 comment = overrated
slashdot = stagnated.
IAAL. Certain things you need to understand about lawyers and law school:
1. No one winds up in the field of law that originally interested that person. Just the way it is.
2. Law school does not teach you the law. People in other fields of study just don't "get this". Accept it and butt out. Law school teaches you tools that you can use in the practice of law, an if you learn some law along the way in an area that interests you, fine, but it is in the nature of the law to change. Do not assume that someone who took an IP course in law school knows the field well enough to be a practitioner or represent clients. They don't. They know just enough to get started in that field PROVIDED THAT they are hired into a firm that specializes in that area, and provided that they have an experienced IP lawyer to learn from.
3. There is nothing more dangerous than a baby lawyer who THINKS that he knows everything. Experienced lawyers have a saying that "youth and enthusiasm is no match for old age and treachery". It's true. Don't push him into an area that he is not ready to initiate practice in. This is an extremely specialized field.
4. Because it is so specialized, you are either an IP lawyer, OR you are some other kind of lawyer. You cannot practice one kind of law and "dabble" in IP law. If you want to be in IP law, then be an IP lawyer. If you don't want to be an IP lawyer, then leave the field to someone who wants to do that.
5. It is unrealistic to expect someone to focus on such an intense specialty as a volunteer. Experienced IP lawyers will take on cases with EFF in order to get the national exposure. If you have the credentials and enough paying clients to cover the overhead, you may be willing to take on a case like Jammie Thomas', because if you win you will be set for life, and so will your firm, because everyone will know the name of the lawyer who beat the RIAA. But if you don't have the experience and specialized practice to make a go of it, you will not do anyone any favors by being embarrassed by an RIAA lawyer.
I'd be much happier if he could check out the Open Inventions Network (OIN) http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/
It seems rather dubious to me, even though many are jumping onto that ship.
Should Linux distributions join the OIN?
Does the concept of OIN even work?
What does a distribution give up when it joins the OIN?
Make a crapload of money working as a lawyer, then donate some of it to your favourite open source project.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
1) Volunteer for the EFF
2) Volunteer to help me
I want to start a site that rates end user license agreements. The site would archive agreements, sent in by volunteers so that people could look-up the agreements before purchasing the software, or see what they are supposedly bound by after the fact. It would provide an English summary of each license, and rate them on several key criterial. Ex: Ability to reverse engineer, etc. I think it could also feature a jerky license-of-the-week section that would highlight egregious, unenforceable, or unconscionable agreements and explain why. The site would be a combination of a database and a blog.
I've wanted to do this for years, but lawyers always want to say "this is not legal advice, etc. etc." so none of them are interested in helping. The few I know who would are not IP lawyers or aren't interested in contract law, etc.
Great question. I went over the wall, from big law firms to open standards work, a decade ago and have loved every minute of it. (I'm the general counsel of a standards org; my definition of virtuous projects probably is broader than some.)
Lots of great project suggestions already in the comments, here. Might also want to consider the "start-up" side, hooking up with a newer or smaller project, and helping to grow it.
-- Shop around. Look for something that ignites your passion. Be aware that the threshold for declaring an organization or "project" is pretty low. Not every SourceForge page is going to be the next Apache. Invest your volunteer time in something which might have legs. The more active a community of contributors, the more likely you'd be useful.
-- Open, collaborative projects generally have accessible archives. You can read up on the issues and personalities, assess possible gigs with somee advance insight. Many also have face-to-face gatherings, in this sector, sometimes on multiple continents. They tend to be friendly and accessible. Go see the tribe live.
-- FYI, some people do make a living at it. There are a bunch of orgs where the lawyer help followed this path: started as a volunteer thing, but then evolved into full-time, self-invented, cool careers.
-- Yes, these projects often need fairly simple, non-patent-prosecutor, lawyer help. Like basic contracts, organizational (company/entity) formation, work-for-hire arrangements, basic licensing, website hosting contract review, etc.
-- There are boobytraps, though. If you act as someone's lawyer, obviously you're likely liable for them and yourself within the defined scope of your work, pay or no pay. So get the scope limits, expectations and any conflicts issues written down and crystal clear, in a few short pithy sentences, up front.
-- A word about being "general counsel": that title often is taken as a broad duty to represent the org. Be careful what you promise. Still, there are some great people having a spectacular, intellectually rewarding time being the volunteer or part-time general counsel for worthy dot.orgs like ID Commons (@DanielPerry), Linux Foundation, OpenID, FSF, IETF and other groups.
Good luck!
Of course he could just contact the non-profit organization of choice directly but there are several advantages to the "clearinghouse" approach. A major advantage is that the work is task-based. This affords the attorney the opportunity to help out without having to worry about over committing. Also, if your friend is interested in IP and has no interest in redrafting bylaws the organization manages the process of having these other tasks covered by attorneys with the appropriate skill-set, desire, and available bandwidth.
As somebody who is soon to graduate law school after 12+ years in business / technology the experience at PBPATL was very encouraging. I met many wonderful attorneys who genuinely appreciate the opportunity to utilize their skills to assist non-profits with their missions. Some of these people work for HUGE companies and never get a chance to deal with the public one-on-one; it was genuinely touching to participate in their meetings and see the attorneys get just as much out of the relationship as the non-profits did.
Anyway... just a thought but if your friend is in the NY area or Atlanta area I'd suggest checking them out. The model is fairly new and so I'm not sure if it has been replicated elsewhere.
JAGga.me ----> Producing video games addressing emotional health and wellness issues affecting teens.
The lawyer friend could write some stuff that spells out the legal requirements for companies when it comes to the GPL and other open source licences in different situations as well as what to do to prevent the situation where a company cant comply with the GPL without violating an NDA with a hardware vendor and other related open source licence complience issues.
Also related to this would be documentation on how copyright holders can pursue GPL violations and particularly stuff that can be used to target repeat offenders who consistantly violate the GPL with every device they sell and only release the source code weeks or months after the device is released *cough*HTC*cough*
Law offices use a lot of software. Using open source in the office whenever it meets your needs, then mentioning you use and why you use it when talking to other lawyers, can go a long way to promoting open source, and the more popular open source software gets within the legal profession, the more people there will be who both have the requisite legal skills to help out and desire to do so. Also, a lot of lawyers end up as legislators or other government officials with the power to influence software purchasing decisions for public agencies; the more such people know about open source software and its public benefits, the better.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
and piracy != copyright violation, anyway.
First of all: pirate parties don't advocate copyright violations. They just try to address the damage being done by the current wild growth of so-called "intellectual property laws": practically unlimited copyrights (90+ years and going), patent on the most frivolous and general ideas, pushing through of "IPR" laws through the most undemocratic channels (ACTA?). So a good place for a dedicated lawyer, I'd say.
Please, stop spreading FUD and get your facts straight (unless you're a shill, anyway).
Yesterday Tiffany Strauchs Rad who describes herself as a "hacker lawyer" gave a related talk at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4236.en.html Recordings of this talk should be available soon. At the end of her talk where a similar question was asked and her answer was more or less: "follow me on twitter (TiffanyRad)".
*TaDum* *Crash* *Thud*
Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week.
Try the fish.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You don't say what country your friend studied law in, or where he lives now? Those factors are obviously relevant when deciding how and where he could help out. For example, I (living in Sweden) answer legal questions in various contexts but I find that US lawyers are reluctant to give legal advise (or when they do they tell you that they don't).
Anyway get in touch with an established organisation. You'll find that they will gladly accept any help they can get. The EFF has been suggested and that seems like a good choice, since they are very litigation oriented. Alternatives include the FSF and the FSFE (which has a "legal network" you can join). These organisations get questions from developers all the time and could use help answering them. It can be anything from a quick answer to "Can I use code from project X in project Y?" to more complex questions about infringement or license compliance, in which case you would probably help them understand the issues at hand and then tell them to get a paid lawyer.
Then there is the Free Software Foundation ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation ) with whom is associated Eben Moglen ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen ). Both could use a hand, and both are rich sources of interesting cases from which your friend could pick one (all in the interest of keeping his commitment manageable) to help with.
You see have have got my point and missed it at the same time. The only way to make a fork would be a unilateral declaration of independence, and it's rather likely that before you'd made more than trivial patches you'd find that declaration being disputed by force.
(FWIW I'd consider it rather more realistic to describe English common law as dating back to the Dark Ages, if not before. It was the legal system in England before it was a colonial power).
Mod parent up, way up. There are far higher priorities than GPL for lawyers who want to help fight injustices and right wrongs, the previous poster nailed many of them, and you can get attorney fees awarded some of the time. Yes, IAAL, and I did defend Craig Etling, the first guy to be arrested for smoking in a bar in California. You're welcome. If OP's friend wants to wet his beak IP-wise, he could try his hand at defending RIAA/MPAA/Righthaven lawsuits.
I did and it was the best career move I ever made. My undergraduate degree was in a non-tech area. I spent the first 2 years of my practice at an international law firm doing banking and finance law. When I couldn't take it anymore I went back to school to get a formal education in Computer Science. At the end of the program, I had multiple offers to be an IP lawyer.
OSS is so pervasive now that every single company must take it into account when doing any type of software project. Companies that can effectively use OSS (and have good legal counsel to help them be effective) have competitive advantages.
I am not saying your friend has to go back to school. Knowing the basics of software engineering is critical however to be an effective attorney in the open source area. You must also have good knowledge of copyright, patent, and trade secret laws. I do a lot of work in the compliance area (making sure my clients are not violating open source or other licenses from upstream providers) and I cannot even begin to recount how many times my legal opinion to a client has depended on the specifics of the architecture of a piece of software.
A career in law is too difficult to spend it practicing in an area you do not love.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Until (or after) your friend finds a project he can sink his well-meaning teeth into I would enjoy reading a blog that discusses not only the horrendous GPL but also the MIT, Apache, BSD, CopyLeft, Creative Commons licenses, etc.. from an actual lawyer. (Maybe there's one out there already? I don't know?) His first post could be on Wordpress enforcing it's GPL by threatening to sue the designers of custom themes and plugins. I know the debate could really use an impartial 3rd party that's actually passed the bar.
That would be starting over. A fork is merely branching off the existing base. A state constitution would be a fork, county charter, city charter, hoa, etc. Forks until you're blue in the face, and they all build on the same base "application" with their own customizations
They did, a while back, but it didn't work out so well.
Did your MOTHER name you MICHAELKRISTOPEIT355?
LOL!
You are such a SAD little TROLL!
What's worse, you'll never know the AWESOME POWER of my HOSTS file.
APK
P.S.=> You suck, ALL 350 of you.
Your friend is actually experiencing the remorse of being a lawyer.
Changing the flavor of lawyerism will not remove his feelings of guilt.
His attempt at involvement in open source is just a way for him to polish up the turd (aka his conscience).
He could help at: http://www.fsfe.org/projects/ftf/ftf.en.html