[TriLUG] July's talk: Free Software and Copyright

[Matthew Frazier via TriLUG]

Hello, TriLUG,

At next July's meeting, I'll be speaking on copyright - specifically,
how free and open source software and copyright work together (or
fight). Copyright's a wide field - even just "free software copyright"
is a wide field - so I'd like to get some advance feedback from the LUG
as I prepare the outline for the talk. I plan to open up with a brief
introduction to copyright in general, but from there I can branch off
into a few different topics:

- The nuts and bolts of how licenses work (including what "incompatible"
means for licenses)
- Common licensing mistakes for free and open source software
- How to select a license for your project
- How to follow licenses properly (it's easier than you think)
- Copyright vs. trademark in Free Software (think Mozilla and Red Hat)
- Copyright vs. patent in Free Software
- Copyright assignment, CLA's, and when they might be necessary
- How fair use works, and applies to software
- New challenges to free software licenses (Oracle v. Google)
- How DRM anticircumvention laws work

I won't have time to discuss everything on this list, so if there's a
particular topic you're interested in (whether it's on the list or not),
or a particular copyright question you'd like answered, just reply
on-list or to me directly. I'm hoping this talk will be both interesting
and practical.

Thanks,
Matthew Frazier
PR Officer, Triangle Linux Users Group
https://www.trilug.org/