Software Freedom Law Center

The Software Freedom Law Center

We provide legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). Founded in 2005, the Center now represents many of the most important and well-established free software and open source projects.

Services

SFLC offers direct services to nonprofit FLOSS developers without charge, as well as publications for everyone. Learn more about our services...

Publications

SFLC frequently publishes the results of its legal analysis of various FLOSS-related legal issues. Browse our legal publications...

Support SFLC

Please consider placing a button on your site or donating money to help support our work.

Keep Up with SFLC!

We now have RSS feed available that includes all RSS-able material from our site. Use this RSS feed if you want to keep up with everything going on with the SFLC, including news, events, podcasts, and blogs!

Latest News

June 15, 2009

SFLC Files Amicus Brief in Jacobsen v. Katzer

Today, SFLC filed a brief amicus curiae in the case Jacobsen v. Katzer before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). In the brief, we argue that a Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) developer whose license has been violated should be able to call upon the courts to prevent further infringing distributions.

The Software Freedom Law Show

June 23, 2009

Episode 0x10: Carlo Piana and the EU Antitrust Case Against Microsoft

Karen and Bradley interview Carlo Piana, a lawyer who has worked extensively in the E.U. Microsoft Anti-Trust case.

Read the show notes...

The Software Freedom Law Show Archive...

SFLC Blog

June 29, 2009

Considerations on Patents that Read on Language Infrastructure

In an essay last Friday entitled Why free software shouldn't depend on Mono or C#, RMS argued a key point that I agree with: the software freedom community should minimize its use of programming language infrastructure that comes primarily from anti-software-freedom companies, notwithstanding FaiF (Free as in Freedom) implementations. I've been thinking about an extension of that argument: that language infrastructure created in a community process is likely more resilient against attacks from proprietary software companies.