• Encontro de Hackers GNU

  • Palestrante: Alexandre Oliva, Deborah Anne Nicholson, Felipe Sanches
  • Tags: FISL 16
  • Info: Seguindo a tradição bienal, hackers GNU brasileiros ou de passagem pelo Brasil se reúnem com interessados e curiosos no FISL para trocar ideias sobre projetos em andamento e novas ameaças às liberdades dos usuários de software.

• Finding a Great Project to Work On, or Great People to Work on Your Project

  • Palestrante: Deborah Anne Nicholson
  • Tags: FISL 16
  • Info: So you're either a technical or a non-technical person and you've
    decided to meet some strangers and help them with their free software
    project, now what? Not all projects were created equal, and you
    definitely want your own experience to be a positive one. How do
    projects signal to the world that they're ready for new contributors?
    Where do you look for these signals? And once you find them, how do
    you make contact and manage the relationship so that the experience is
    mutually rewarding? Luckily, there are some very concrete ways to
    separate out projects that would be great to work on and ones that
    would be, well... challenging.
    
    The free software movement needs to grow and that starts with making
    our projects more welcoming to newcomers. In addition to coders, many
    projects sorely need writers for documentation, press releases and
    blogging or experts on outreach, fundraising and volunteer management
    or a friendly pack of translators, but aren't sure how to get them.
    Tweaking your volunteer pitch, looking in different places, being open
    to different communications channels, and finding ways to appreciate
    folks will help immensely.
    
    Once you've got them, letting your new contributors get on with what
    they're good at will help them feel invested. This talk covers how to
    set parameters and manage expectations for new people. This talk is
    for both project seekers and for folks who would like to grow their
    project. Let's build a bigger, better free software movement!

• Patents and Copyright and Trademarks: A Primer

  • Palestrante: Deborah Anne Nicholson, Nick Vidal
  • Tags: FISL 16
  • Info: There's a constellation of legal constructs that you often hear referred to collectively as "intellectual property law." That's a tricky term because it encourages you to think of these three separate legal ideas as more or less the same, even though they're very different. More importantly, each type of "intellectual property" has different implications for free and open source software developers.
    
    These three concepts were originally designed to provide ownership rights for tangible creations. Software isn't particularly well-served by any of these mechanisms and so we use different concepts for different parts of our software. Just to make it more confusing, each of these mechanisms has also evolved and expanded over time. If you've ever wondered why patents are so tricky when applied to software or how copyright law works, then this is the talk for you. Ms. Nicholson will also describe how a few of the most common software licenses work, where you're most likely to encounter a trademark issue in software development and what you -- as a developer -- can do about software patent aggression.
    
    Absolutely none of this is meant to stand in for legal advice. However, your time with a lawyer can be greatly shortened when you have a good grasp of the basic legal concepts going in.