Thinking about FOSS, legal advice, and pro bono legal support.
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Thinking about FOSS, legal advice, and pro bono legal support.
What if there was a fund - be that from a funding body, or donations, or whatever - which paid (at reasonable rates, not Big Law Firm Prices) some lawyers to support FOSS projects.
So that it was free at point of use for those projects, but did not rely on lawyers working for free.
All outputs (subject to sorting issues to do with privilege) would be licensed under suitably open terms, with a goal of maximising re-use.
Would the ORG have anything in place for this?
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Thinking about FOSS, legal advice, and pro bono legal support.
What if there was a fund - be that from a funding body, or donations, or whatever - which paid (at reasonable rates, not Big Law Firm Prices) some lawyers to support FOSS projects.
So that it was free at point of use for those projects, but did not rely on lawyers working for free.
All outputs (subject to sorting issues to do with privilege) would be licensed under suitably open terms, with a goal of maximising re-use.
You mean some sort of ‘law center’ for supporting software freedom?
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@neil Basically Legal Aid for FOSS? I think it's a good idea, though I don't know if people would be willing to donate (giving to lawyers feels like a hard sell!)
edit: you said reasonable rates so probably quite a bit more than Legal Aid from my experience...
@pwaring Yes, sort of, perhaps, ish.
I'm not massively familiar with legal aid here - aside from what I've read in the legal press, about the myriad problems - but perhaps a similar kind of output.
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@neil Basically Legal Aid for FOSS? I think it's a good idea, though I don't know if people would be willing to donate (giving to lawyers feels like a hard sell!)
edit: you said reasonable rates so probably quite a bit more than Legal Aid from my experience...
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Would the ORG have anything in place for this?
️@simonzerafa Not as it stands, no. I'm not aware of anyone doing quite what I have in mind (UK or elsewhere).
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@philcowans Yes, exactly!
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You mean some sort of ‘law center’ for supporting software freedom?
@david_chisnall Some overlaps with SFLC, perhaps, but also not.
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Thinking about FOSS, legal advice, and pro bono legal support.
What if there was a fund - be that from a funding body, or donations, or whatever - which paid (at reasonable rates, not Big Law Firm Prices) some lawyers to support FOSS projects.
So that it was free at point of use for those projects, but did not rely on lawyers working for free.
All outputs (subject to sorting issues to do with privilege) would be licensed under suitably open terms, with a goal of maximising re-use.
@neil I like it! Anyway to get more resources out there. I know that EFF, ACLU, FSF, FSFE, etc do this to some degree, but they have very few resources to offer.
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@neil I like it! Anyway to get more resources out there. I know that EFF, ACLU, FSF, FSFE, etc do this to some degree, but they have very few resources to offer.
@eighthave Yes, exactly. Different organisations touch on this (often in quite jurisdiction-specific ways), but not quite what I have in mind.
But there might be reasons why none do quite what I have in mind...
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Thinking about FOSS, legal advice, and pro bono legal support.
What if there was a fund - be that from a funding body, or donations, or whatever - which paid (at reasonable rates, not Big Law Firm Prices) some lawyers to support FOSS projects.
So that it was free at point of use for those projects, but did not rely on lawyers working for free.
All outputs (subject to sorting issues to do with privilege) would be licensed under suitably open terms, with a goal of maximising re-use.
Part of this pondering came from the Sovereign Tech Fund "Fellowship" scheme:
Where the focus is not on a particular technical deliverable, but on supporting FOSS more broadly, recognising that there's more to it than just lines of code.
This just seems like common sense to me
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Thinking about FOSS, legal advice, and pro bono legal support.
What if there was a fund - be that from a funding body, or donations, or whatever - which paid (at reasonable rates, not Big Law Firm Prices) some lawyers to support FOSS projects.
So that it was free at point of use for those projects, but did not rely on lawyers working for free.
All outputs (subject to sorting issues to do with privilege) would be licensed under suitably open terms, with a goal of maximising re-use.
@neil pro bono or bro bono? what ever it is, it's a wonderful idea!
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Part of this pondering came from the Sovereign Tech Fund "Fellowship" scheme:
Where the focus is not on a particular technical deliverable, but on supporting FOSS more broadly, recognising that there's more to it than just lines of code.
This just seems like common sense to me
@neil you should reach out to the STA and/or the brand new Digital Commons EDIC (https://digital-commons-edic.eu) to see if they are interested, that would be very useful
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@simonzerafa Not as it stands, no. I'm not aware of anyone doing quite what I have in mind (UK or elsewhere).
What sort of funding level would this need?
Just wondering were we might be able to get funding from
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What sort of funding level would this need?
Just wondering were we might be able to get funding from
It would depend on how many projects wanted how much legal advice, really!
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@josh I doubt it too, but that's no reason not to think about such things.
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Thinking about FOSS, legal advice, and pro bono legal support.
What if there was a fund - be that from a funding body, or donations, or whatever - which paid (at reasonable rates, not Big Law Firm Prices) some lawyers to support FOSS projects.
So that it was free at point of use for those projects, but did not rely on lawyers working for free.
All outputs (subject to sorting issues to do with privilege) would be licensed under suitably open terms, with a goal of maximising re-use.
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Thinking about FOSS, legal advice, and pro bono legal support.
What if there was a fund - be that from a funding body, or donations, or whatever - which paid (at reasonable rates, not Big Law Firm Prices) some lawyers to support FOSS projects.
So that it was free at point of use for those projects, but did not rely on lawyers working for free.
All outputs (subject to sorting issues to do with privilege) would be licensed under suitably open terms, with a goal of maximising re-use.
@neil speaking as a @freecad maintainer, our problem is not really money. We have enough to pay a lawyer in case we need it, and smaller projects are much less likely to need a lawyer (you do that basically for heavier problems that involve money). Our main problem is actually to find local lawyers who know about FOSS and are willing to work in that context. The few that do are mostly expensive international firms...
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@neil speaking as a @freecad maintainer, our problem is not really money. We have enough to pay a lawyer in case we need it, and smaller projects are much less likely to need a lawyer (you do that basically for heavier problems that involve money). Our main problem is actually to find local lawyers who know about FOSS and are willing to work in that context. The few that do are mostly expensive international firms...
Yes, sure, finding specialist lawyers can be challenging.
We do exist, but there are not a lot of us.
I help a range of projects, of different sizes, and I don't agree that only big projects can benefit from legal advice.
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@annehargreaves @mikarv Law clinics are amazing, and take a lot of supervision!
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Yes, sure, finding specialist lawyers can be challenging.
We do exist, but there are not a lot of us.
I help a range of projects, of different sizes, and I don't agree that only big projects can benefit from legal advice.
@neil Of course not, legal advice is meant to be for everybody, but speaking from experience, most legal matters flew over our heads before we got (more or less
) organized into an org. The project was really just a github repo and an amount of people working on it but not really legally responsible nor willing to be. But maybe indeed that's a grey zone that would do better if some support or consultancy was available
