Friday, November 4, 2011 – 08:30 to 19:00
EOLE is now in its fourth year. After focusing on the then recently published GPL version 3 (Paris, 2008), presenting FOSS before the European Parliament (Brussels, 2009) and looking at the legal issues raised by freeing public sector software (Torino, 2010), EOLE is moving to Barcelona and aims to focus on two areas so far untouched (directly) by the Event: FOSS in business and FOSS in academia / research.
FOSS-based business and business models, licensing practices in software development projects that incorporate or are based on FOSS, and corporate due diligence with regard to FOSS use are three of many areas of interest when studying the legal issues of FOSS in business. This year’s Event hopes to elucidate some of the main issues raised by creating and running a FOSS-based business, from the “provider’s” perspective, on the one hand, and, on the other, enterprise purchase or “adoption” of FOSS and how they collaborate with FOSS projects. Among other topics, we aim to cover:
- License selection and management
- Licensing models, dual licensing, “open-core”, licenses “in the cloud”
- Warranties and guarantees in FOSS projects
- FOSS-based software development contracts
- Legal issues for FOSS-based supply chain management
- Enterprise collaboration and contributions to FOSS projects
- Trademark policies and management.
FOSS is also becoming ever more present in Academia, both in education and research and development. Universities are incorporating more and more FOSS in their online learning platforms and increasingly participating in research projects whose results are published under a FOSS license. How is this impacting online offerings and student services, and also technology transfer and spin-offs? In particular, what are the legal issues raised for these institutions through these activities ?