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Finding the right open-source savvy lawyer (Linux-Watch)

[Posted April 7, 2008 by jake]

Linux-Watch has some advice when looking for a lawyer, especially one knowledgeable about free software licenses and the like. "Chances are you already have at least an idea of how to find a contract lawyer, a tax law specialist or a real-estate attorney. But what if your programmers are using open-source code that's licensed under two different licenses? What if you're concerned with how a patent might affect open-source software your company is already using? Or let's say a company based in Utah decides that you've put its proprietary code into Linux, who do you turn to then?"

(Log in to post comments)

Finding the right free software savvy lawyer (GNU/Linux-Watched)

Posted Apr 7, 2008 20:53 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

We've been doing some work on this in FSFE. We have a legal conference in Amsterdam this Friday with about 50 lawyers coming, so that's a milestone in building the network.

IIRC we hit capacity, so I'm not plugging the conference :-) just mentioning that this issue isn't going unaddressed in Europe.

Finding the right free software savvy lawyer (GNU/Linux-Watched)

Posted Apr 7, 2008 22:28 UTC (Mon) by mattmelton (subscriber, #34842) [Link]

Ask me... well, if I pass the year :D

A word of warning however, if I'm anything to go by, computer engineers who convert to law are
crap lawyers. Your best bet is to use a full service city firm who will have their own
paralegal-run training program for IT disciplines.

Finding the right open-source savvy lawyer (Linux-Watch)

Posted Apr 8, 2008 1:19 UTC (Tue) by eli (subscriber, #11265) [Link]

Van Lindberg is an engineer-turned-lawyer who gave a keynote at PyCon 
this year.  (Also did a talk last year.)

http://www.oreillynet.com/fyi/blog/2008/03/pycon_keynoter...

The videos of the PyCon talks are supposed to be posted to YouTube, but 
they aren't all up yet: 
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=pycon08&p=r

Finding the right open-source savvy lawyer (Linux-Watch)

Posted Apr 8, 2008 3:28 UTC (Tue) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link]

I'm confused. Doesn't everyone just Ask Luis?

Finding the right open-source savvy lawyer (Linux-Watch)

Posted Apr 9, 2008 18:33 UTC (Wed) by slef (subscriber, #14720) [Link]

I read the article and as I read I thought "that's odd" several times, in the choice of
language, who it praises and who it omits.  Then I got to the end and found the reason: SJVN.
Please, LWN, start mentioning the author's name (or better, stop promoting SJVN and the causes
of SJVN).