Hi all!
The CFP for the FOSDEM Legal & Policy Devroom, again co-organised by FSFE, is online. [1]
We seek proposals for 30 or 50 minute talks that address issues of software freedom project policies and legal issues that extend beyond and/or are orthogonal to technical issues faced by projects. For ideas about talk topics see the background information below.
Best
Alex
[1] https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/2021q4/003356.html
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Call For Participation Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom at FOSDEM 2022
CONFERENCE DATE: Saturday & Sunday 5-6 February 2022 online from Brussels, Belgium DEVROOM DATE: Saturday 5 February 2022 CFP DEADLINE: Wednesday 27 December 2021 at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth) SPEAKERS NOTIFIED: Friday 7 January 2022 (on or before)
Quick CFP Overview (TL;DR) ==========================
Hackers, developers, contributors and lawyers alike are encouraged to submit on any FOSS-related policy or legal topic.
We seek proposals for 30 or 50 minute talks that address issues of software freedom project policies and legal issues that extend beyond and/or are orthogonal to technical issues faced by projects. For ideas about talk topics see the background information below.
You can respond to this CFP by creating a user account on Pentabarf and creating one (or more) talk proposals by 27 December 2021. See details below.
CFP Details ===========
Copyright law provides many of the basic legal underpinnings of Free Software. Patent and trademark law and legal frameworks relating to data privacy and security also have significant relevance to Free Software development. Governance and policies around free software projects (beyond mere outbound licensing) set the rules for collaboration and can be critical to a project's success. Also governments, institutions and administrations increasingly rely on Free Software and regulate and govern this area.
Our community has substantial expertise in this area yet there are few venues to discuss these matters in a forum open to all. Hackers, developers, contributors, lawyers, policy experts, and community leaders all possess expertise in these matters.
This DevRoom seeks proposals for 30 or 50 minute talks. Sessions should address issues of software freedom project policies and legal issues that extend beyond and/or are orthogonal to technical issues faced by projects and government regulations. Such topics could include, but aren't necessarily limited to:
* What legislation should we be watching, what has been recently enacted, and what coming soon? What effect could these have on software freedom?
* 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?
* How do ethical issues intersect with your project? How do those issues interact with software freedom? How can we protect user's rights in the current legal and technical landscape? Are there ways to mitigate the hold that click through terms of service have over the average person's use of software? Are privacy regulations like GDPR having any appreciable impact on software freedom?
* 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 influence the direction of 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? What strategies do you use to you handle toxic people 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 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 or software freedom!
Should I Submit? ================
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 Free Software.
Look at past talks in our DevRoom for inspiration:
https://archive.fosdem.org/2021/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/
https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/
https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/
https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/
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 27 December 2021 at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth)
Please use the following URL to submit your talk to FOSDEM 2022: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM22
and follow these steps:
* 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.) Shorter and more concise is better!
* 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 30 or 50 minute time slot. If you select any other time amount, your submission is very likely to be rejected.
* 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 2022, 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 Saturday, 5 February 2022. (Please indicate any challenges you may have with respect to your availability to present during the European time zone.)
Failure to follow these instructions above (and those on the FOSDEM 2022 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 "Submission 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. We appreciate the effort you put into crafting your submission to give yourself the best chance of acceptance.
About the DevRoom Organizers ============================
The co-organizers of the FOSDEM 2022 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom are (in alphabetical order by surname):
- Richard Fontana, Senior Commercial Counsel, Red Hat
- Matthias Kirschner, President, Free Software Foundation Europe
- Bradley M. Kuhn, Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence at Software Freedom Conservancy
- Max Mehl, FSFE Programme Manager, Free Software Foundation Europe
- Alexander Sander, FSFE Policy Consultant
- Karen M. Sandler, Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, Lecturer In Law Columbia Law School
You are welcome to contact us all at <fosdem-legal-policy at faif.us> with questions about this CFP.
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