[PLUG-ANNOUNCE] TONIGHT: March PLUG Meeting: The Future of Copyleft

[Michael Dexter]

Portland Linux/Unix Group General Meeting Announcement

Who: Bradley M. Kuhn
What: Considering the Future of Copyleft: How Will The Next Generation 
Perceive GPL?
Where: PSU, 1930 SW 4th Ave. Room FAB 86-01 (Lower Level)
When: Thursday, March 5th, 2015 at 7pm
Why: The pursuit of technology freedom
Stream: http://pdxlinux.org/live/

Copyleft licenses, particularly the GPL and LGPL, are widely used 
throughout the Free Software community. However, recent for-profit 
corporate interest in Free Software development has led to a renewed 
preference toward non-copyleft licensing by for-profit entities. 
Meanwhile, many for-profit entities that do use copyleft for their own 
software now do so in a manner that most copyleft aficionados find, at 
best, distasteful and at worst, abusive.

A long-standing truce exists in our community between fans of 
non-copyleft licensing and copyleft. No one in the copyleft communities 
disputes that non-copylefted Free Software is an important part of our 
community. However, copyleft faces new challenges that make past debates 
about the appropriateness of copyleft seem quite minor by comparison.

This talk will discuss all aspects of the complicated situation facing 
copyleft, including younger developers apparent preference for 
non-copyleft licensing (as expressed, in part, [in the "post-open 
source" debates](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Open_Source)), the 
widespread and common failures for companies to comply with GPL's 
relatively easy requirements, and how licensing choices are today, 
unlike in the past, rarely in the hands of individual developers, but 
instead their corporate employers.


Bradley M. Kuhn is the President and Distinguished Technologist at 
Software Freedom Conservancy (sfconservancy.org) and on the Board of 
Directors of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Kuhn began his work in 
the software freedom movement as a volunteer in 1992, when he became an 
early adopter of the GNU/Linux operating system, and began contributing 
to various FLOSS projects. He worked during the 1990s as a system 
administrator and software developer for various companies, and taught 
AP Computer Science at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. Kuhn's 
non-profit career began in 2000, when he was hired by the FSF. As FSF's 
Executive Director from 2001–2005, Kuhn led FSF's GPL enforcement, 
launched its Associate Member program, and invented the Affero GPL. From 
2005-2010, Kuhn worked as the Policy Analyst and Technology Director of 
the Software Freedom Law Center. Kuhn was the primary volunteer for 
Conservancy from 2006–2010, and has been a full-time staffer since early 
2011. Kuhn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in Computer Science from Loyola 
University in Maryland, and an M.S. in Computer Science from the 
University of Cincinnati. Kuhn's Master's thesis discussed methods for 
dynamic interoperability of FLOSS programming languages. Kuhn received 
the O'Reilly Open Source Award in 2012, in recognition for his lifelong 
policy work on copyleft licensing.


Calagator Page: http://calagator.org/events/1250467782

Many will head to the Lucky Lab at 1945 NW Quimby St. after the meeting.

Rideshares Available

PLUG Page with information about all PLUG events: http://pdxlinux.org/
Follow PLUG on Twitter: http://twitter.com/pdxlinux

PLUG is open to everyone and does not tolerate abusive behavior on its 
mailing lists or at its meetings.

See you there!

Michael Dexter
PLUG Volunteer