Center offers open source license defense, legal services

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Feb. 01, 2005

The OSDL (Open Source Development Labs) has raised $4 million to seed a non-profit, independent legal center that will provide free services to eligible open source developers and projects. The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) will offer asset stewardship, licensing, license defense and litigation support, legal support, and lawyer training.

The Center will be based in New York, and will be run by Board Chairman and Director-Counsel Eben Moglen, a Professor at Columbia Law School who has long served General Counselor for the Free Software Foundation (FSF, aka GNU.org). Moglen is regarded as one of the world's leading experts on copyright law as applied to software.

The Center will be co-managed by Legal Director Daniel B. Ravicher, founder of the Public Patent Foundation.

The Center will open initially with two full-time intellectual property attorneys on staff, with two more expected to join later this year. Its initial clients will include the FSF, and the Samba Project.

Moglen says the Center will be "software license neutral," adding that it intends to be directly involved in a revision of the GPL currently being undertaken by the FSF. It will be dedicated to helping "non-profit" open source developers and projects who would not otherwise have access to needed legal services. Further eligibility details will be available online.

The Center will be funded initially by a newly established $4M IP (intellectual property) fund created with money raised by the OSDL. However, the Center will be "an independent organization not affiliated with OSDL," according to Moglen.

Additional board members include:

Diane M. Peters -- Peters began working with the OSDL as outside legal counsel in 2002, and was hired as the OSDL's general counselor in August, 2004.
Lawrence Lessig -- A Stanford Law School professor who founded the school's Center for Internet and Society, and who wrote The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.
Daniel J. Weitzner -- A principle research scientist and professor in MIT's AI (artificial intelligence) lab who directs the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and is responsible for development of technology standards that enable the web to address social, legal, and public policy concerns such as privacy, free speech, security, protection of minors, authentication, intellectual property, and identification.

Moglen said, "Providing necessary legal services to open source developers is becoming increasingly important to prevent liability and other legal issues from interfering with [open source's] success. The Law Center [will] protect the legitimate rights and interests of free and open source software projects and developers, who often do not have the means to secure the legal services they need."

Samba founder and recently appointed OSDL fellow Andrew Tridgell said, "Free software projects often face legal issues that need expert advice, but it can sometimes be difficult or prohibitively costly to obtain. This is an important milestone in the maturity of the free software community."

Lawrence Lessig said, "Both free and open source software face many emerging legal threats. We should be skeptical of legal mechanisms that enable those most threatened by the success of open source and free software to resist its advance."

OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen said, "OSDL is committed to supporting initiatives such as the Law Center. We encourage other companies and organizations to contribute."

A year ago, the OSDL raised $10M for a separate legal defense fund to protect Linus Torvalds and Linux end user companies subjected to Linux-related litigation by the SCO group. Last week, it announced it would help with a civicly funded open source incubator in a suburb of Portland, Ore.

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