###################################################################### Call For Participation Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom at FOSDEM 2016 CONFERENCE DATE: Saturday & Sunday 30-31 January 2016 in Brussels, Belgium CFP DEADLINE: Sunday 29 November 2015 at 23:00 UTC SPEAKERS NOTIFIED: Friday 4 December 2015 (on or before) CFP Introduction ================ Open Source and Free Software are possible as a result of hacks on copyright law. Patent and trademark law and the emerging law of data privacy and security also dramatically affect Free Software development. Governance and policies around free software set the rules for collaboration and can be critical to a project's success. Our community has more expertise in this area than you think! The constant mantra of "you'd have to ask a lawyer" has, in our view, given way to the undeniable fact that many participants in Free Software development (both lawyers and non-lawyers are alike) *are* the experts. And we need to discuss these matters in an forum open to all. TL;DR Lawyers, hackers and contributors alike are encouraged to submit on any project policy or legal topic as long as it's medium or advanced and should fill out an application on Pentabarf (see below for details). Topics Sought ============= This DevRoom seeks proposals for 25 and 45 minute talks and/or panel discussions that address the issues of software freedom project policies that are beyond and/or orthogonal to technical issues of the project. Such topics could include, but aren't necessarily limited to: * Who controls the copyright, trademark, or patent licensing, release plans, or security bug reporting policies of your project, and why? What challenges have you faced in these policy areas and how are you seeking to change it? * How is your project governed? Do you have a non-profit organization, or a for-profit company that primarily controls your project, or neither? Do you wish your project governance was different? Who decided your governance initially? What politics (good and bad) have occurred around your governance choices and how have you changed your policy? Does your project have a "shadow governance", whereby technical governance is open and fair, but some entity has its own opaque political structure that influences your project? Are you worried that your project might and you don't know? Talks exploring these issues are welcome. * Legal topics of all sorts and their interaction with software freedom culture and work remain welcome, and could include: How does your project make use of legal advice? What legal advice do you give projects and what topics do you put first on the list to worry about in projects? Discuss in detail a legal and/or policy issue a project faced and how did your community deal with it? What lessons did you learn? * Contribution and engagement policies: how does your project engage new contributors and what policy decisions did your project make to welcome new contributors? What legal issues or policy concerns has your project faced historically in its community engagement efforts, and what did you learn from these experiences? * How does money impact your community? Are all your developers paid? What policies do you set to welcome volunteers to join a community where most developers are paid? Does reliance on volunteer labor lead to lack of diversity since only the affluent can participate? * How do projects handle conflicts of interest and make sure that relevant interests of contributors are disclosed in important decision making discussions? * Case studies of positive examples of commercial actors in Free Software. * Talks on license compliance, licensing business models, and anything you've seen in our DevRoom before are of course welcome. Regarding topic relevancy, here's the only "don't": please don't propose introductory talks; there are other venues appropriate for those. FOSDEM is the meeting place of experts in Open Source and Free Software project governance, law, and policy. This DevRoom is for intermediate to advanced topics surrounding just about anything you might call a "legal" or "policy" issue for your project! Should I Submit? ================ However, do consider that what may seem elementary to you may in fact be an intermediate topic in this area. In particular, while we expect many submissions from lawyers, we've found in our careers that non-lawyers often know just as much (and sometimes more) about these topics than lawyers. Developers who regularly face complex policy and legal questions for projects are strongly and particularly encouraged to submit proposals. Historically, some of the most lively and intriguing talks in this DevRoom's previous years have been from developers who have been thrust (often due to circumstances beyond their control) into dealing with legal and policy topics for Open Source and Free Software. Be sure to look at past talks in our DevRoom for inspiration: https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/track/legal_issues/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2012/schedule/track/legal_issues_devroom.html CFP Schedule And Submission Details =================================== Submit proposals NO LATER THAN 29 November 2015 at 23:00 UTC Please use the following URL to submit your talk to FOSDEM 2016: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM16 and follow the following rules: * Select as the Track "Legal and Policy Issues devroom". * Include a title. (Note that "Subtitle" entry doesn't appear on all conference documents, so make sure "Title" can stand on its own without "Subtitle" present.) * Include an Abstract of about 500 characters and a full description of any length you wish, but in both fields, please be concise, but clear and descriptive. * Indicate whether you seek a 25 or 45 minute slot. NOTE: the quality of the submission needs to be progressively *more impressive* the longer time you ask for and we may accept your submission with an alternate duration as our schedule is so tight. * Use the "Links" sub-area to your past work in the field you'd like to share. Particularly helpful are recordings (audio/video) of your past talks on the subject or past papers/blog posts you've written on the subject. * You are encouraged to enter biographic information under the "Person" section (e.g. you may upload an image, enter your background in the "Description" tab, and sites of interest under the "Links" tab). * Affirmative confirmation that you agree to CC-By-SA-4.0 or Cc-By-4.0 licensing of your talk, in the "Submission Notes" field. Add a statement such as this: "Should my presentation be scheduled for FOSDEM 2016, I hereby agree to license all recordings, slides and any other materials presented under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International license. Sincerely, s/YOUR_NAME/" * Also in the notes field, note your affirmative confirmation of availability to speak on Saturday 31 January 2016 in Brussels. (You may include time slots of non-availability on Saturday, but this may negatively impact acceptance decisions.) Failure to follow these instructions above (and those on the FOSDEM 2016 site) may result in automatic rejection of your talk submission. However, if you have trouble with submission via the official system, please do contact <fosdem-legal-policy@faif.us> for assistance. Travel Funding does not exist (sadly)! -------------------------------------- We are volunteer track organizers of a volunteer conference. We cannot sponsor travel ourselves. However, please *do* submit anyway if you aren't sure about your travel funding and mention in your application that you have uncertainties. Please note that we may have to deny your proposal due to lack of travel funding alone, but we would like the opportunity to talk and discuss the situation with highly exceptional speakers who would like to join our DevRoom but can't due to lack of funding. Diversity Statement ------------------- The organizers of this DevRoom are committed to increasing the diversity of the free software movement, and to making the diversity that already exists more visible. To that end, our CFP process takes demographic information into account in order to build a program that features as many different voices and perspectives as possible. Please share any demographic information about yourself in the "Submissions Notes" field that you are comfortable sharing. Such disclosure is not mandatory by any means. No Assurance of Acceptance -------------------------- The organizers (listed below) realize many of our friends and colleagues will respond to this CFP. Based on our many previous years of experience in this DevRoom, we must welcome submissions from all, but an invitation from any of us to submit is *not* an assurance of acceptance. We typically must make hard decisions. About the DevRoom Organizers ============================ The co-organizers of the FOSDEM 2016 Legal and Policy Issues DevRom are (in alphabetical order by surname): - Richard Fontana, Open Source Counsel, Red Hat - Bradley M. Kuhn, Distinguished Technologist, Software Freedom Conservancy, Director of the Free Software Foundation - Tom Marble, Creative Technologist, Informatique, Inc. - Karen Sandler, Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, Pro Bono Counsel to the Free Software Foundation, GNOME Foundation and QuestionCopyright.org You are welcome to contact us all at <fosdem-legal-policy@faif.us> with questions about this CFP. ######################################################################