[FOSDEM] Call for Participation: Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom at FOSDEM 2018

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Is it just me, or do the 'desired topics' listed here overlap quite a bit
with the respective list from the Community devroom?

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 2:04 PM, Tom Marble <tmarble at info9.net> wrote:

>
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>
>                          Call For Participation
>              Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom at FOSDEM 2018
>
> CONFERENCE DATE:   Saturday & Sunday 3-4 February 2018 in Brussels, Belgium
> DEVROOM DATE:      Sunday 4 February 2018
> CFP DEADLINE:      Sunday 26 November 2017 at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth)
> SPEAKERS NOTIFIED: Sunday 3 December 2017 (on or before)
>
> CFP Introduction
> ================
>
> Copyright law provides many of the basic legal underpinnings of Open
> Source and Free Software. Patent and trademark law and legal
> frameworks relating to data privacy and security also have significant
> effects on Free Software development. Governance and policies around
> free software projects set the rules for collaboration and can be
> critical to a project's success.
>
> Our community has substantial expertise in this area yet there are few
> venues to discuss these matters in a forum open to all. Hackers,
> lawyers, policy experts, and community leaders all possess expertise
> in these matters.
>
> TL;DR
> =====
>
> Hackers, contributors and lawyers alike are encouraged to submit on
> any project policy or legal topic. Successful proposals will cover
> topics of interest at a medium to advanced level. Fill out an
> application on FOSDEM's Pentabarf. (See below for details.)
>
> Topics Sought
> =============
>
> This DevRoom seeks proposals for 25 minute talks and/or open
> discussion sessions in an unconference format that address issues of
> software freedom project policies and legal issues that extend beyond
> and/or are orthogonal to technical issues faced by projects. Such
> topics could include, but aren't necessarily limited to:
>
>   * Who controls the copyright, trademark, or patent licensing, release
>     plans, CLA administration, 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? Are you
>     exploring any new solutions for governance?  Do you want to ask
> questions
>     of a room full of experts about your project's governance?
>
>   * 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 your
>     project faced and how your community dealt with it. What lessons
>     did you learn?  Are some of your developers afraid to discuss legal or
>     quasi-legal issues without their lawyers, or their employers' lawyers,
>     present? How has that impeded or helped your project?  Are your
>     lawyers really your lawyers (e.g., do corporate lawyers for companies
>     in your community advise the project even though not all contributors
>     work for that company)?
>
>   * 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 affect your community? How is funding of developers
> handled
>     in your project?  What policies do you set to welcome volunteers to
> join a
>     community where most developers are paid?  Does your project have
> policies
>     that forbid funding developers directly?  Does reliance on volunteer
> labor
>     lead to lack of diversity since only the affluent can participate?
>     If you had unconstrained resources at your disposal, what would you
> change
>     about the funding structure of your project?  Given the resources you
> have,
>     what have you tried to change?  Have you succeeded or failed?  Would
> more
>     money in the ecosystem hurt or help your project?
>
>   * How do projects handle conflicts of interest and make sure
>     that relevant interests of contributors are disclosed in important
>     decision making discussions?
>
>   * Strategies and plans for addressing harassment, exclusionary and/or
>     discriminatory behavior in FLOSS communities. Do you have a Code
>     of Conduct? Have you needed to enforce it?  Was it successful in
>     improving behavior and diversity in your community?
>
>   * Talks on license compliance, licensing business models, and anything
>     akin to, or building upon, what you've seen in our DevRoom before are
> of
>     course welcome. (URLs to talks from previous years are below.)
>
> 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 to
> receive
> submissions from lawyers, we've found in our careers that non-lawyers
> often know just as much (and often more) about these topics than
> lawyers. Developers and other Free Software project participants who
> regularly
> face complex policy and legal questions 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 issues for Open Source and Free Software.
>
> Look at past talks in our DevRoom for inspiration:
>    https://archive.fosdem.org/2017/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/
>    https://archive.fosdem.org/2016/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/
>    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 26 November 2017 at 23:59 AoE
> (Anywhere on Earth)
>
> Please use the following URL to submit your talk to FOSDEM 2018:
>   https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM18
>
> and follow these 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 a 25 minute time slot. If you select any other time amount,
>       your submission is very likely to be rejected. Only choose a longer
>       slot if your proposal is exceptionally interesting and is a group
>       discussion rather than a solo talk.
>
>     * 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).
>
>     * State 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 2018, I hereby
>           agree to license all recordings, slides and any other
>           materials presented under the Creative Commons Attribution
>           ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
>
>     * Also in the notes field, confirm your availability to speak on
> Sunday,
>       4 February 2018 in Brussels. (You may include time slots
>       of non-availability on Sunday, but this may negatively
>       impact acceptance decisions.)
>
> Failure to follow these instructions above (and those on the FOSDEM
> 2018 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 at faif.us> for assistance.
>
> Diversity Statement
> -------------------
>
> The organizers of this DevRoom are committed to increasing the
> diversity of the free software movement. 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.
> If you are comfortable doing so, please share any demographic
> information about yourself in the "Submissions Notes". 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. We 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.
>
> This year, our DevRoom is one day, so unfortunately we expect that
> most proposals will be rejected. Please, submit your best possible
> work and put effort into crafting your submission to give yourself the
> best chance of acceptance.
>
> About the DevRoom Organizers
> ============================
>
> The co-organizers of the FOSDEM 2018 Legal and Policy Issues DevRom are
> (in alphabetical order by surname):
>
> - Richard Fontana, Member of Board of Directors of the Open Source
>   Initiative; Senior Commercial Counsel, Red Hat
>
> - Bradley M. Kuhn,  Distinguished Technologist of Software Freedom
>   Conservancy and Member of Board of Directors 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 and the GNOME
>   Foundation, Visiting Scholar/Faculty team of Center for Research in Open
>   Source Software, University of California Santa Cruz
>
> You are welcome to contact us all at <fosdem-legal-policy at faif.us> with
> questions about this CFP.
>
>
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