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/dev/lawyer

>> law, technology, and the space between

All content by Kyle E. Mitchell, who is not your lawyer.

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  1. The Fourth Circuit’s Opinion in the Abrego García Case

    a line-by-line reading

  2. Provisional Guidance for Users of LLM-Based Code Generators

    available intuition for avoiding big risks

  3. Open Source When We Say So

    still stronger claims of self-authority in OSI’s new AI “definition”

  4. Open Source Company as Costco

    parallels weak and strong

  5. Negotiating Bastardry

    unexpected wisdom from a motorcycle channel

  6. Llama 3 versus LLama 3.1 License Terms

    handy redline and takeaways

  7. Not The Same Security Debate

    open source security today is different in kind

  8. Pick-From-a-List Tools

    my favorite heretical UNIX programs

  9. Blue Oak Contributor License

    it’s just a license

  10. Free and Open in the Latest Draft of the EU Cyber Resilience Act

  11. Copyleft Intolerance and the Defining-Open Mind Trap

    forgetting licensing history past, we fail to repeat our successes

  12. Unlimited Indemnity for Unpaid Developers?

    James Bottomley on liability, politics, and forgotten boilerplate

  13. Support the Blue Oak License List

    fund the Web’s actionable allow-list of software licenses

  14. PolyForm Countdown

    a simple, solid form for changing your license later

  15. Toward PolyForm Shield Version 2

    streamline and revise for easier reading

  16. A Short, Simple Template for Scheduled Relicensing

    decouple license rules from how we relax them

  17. Amazon Has a Restricted License, Too

    this is not a bad thing

  18. We Were Wrong About the GPLs

    an unsurprising admission in Conservancy v. Vizio

  19. Understanding “RISC-y Business”

    trading chips progression for chips advantage

  20. Recommended Resource: CRS Congressional Court Watcher

    free briefs of new cases

  21. Two Kinds of “Relicensing”

    going-forward and retroactive

  22. Two Kinds of “Dual Licensing”

    a license operator and a business model

  23. Overloaded

    putting finer points on established fuzzy terms

  24. Real and Imagined CLA Overreach

    CLAs go wrong when they act like hiring terms

  25. Exactly the Wrong AI Copyrightability Case

    Creativity Machine guy assumed away the debate and lost

  26. HashiCorp’s New Licensing

    a new benchmark for presenting license change

  27. Where is the rule that makes vague license rules legal no-ops?

    fear, uncertainty, and doubt upon ethical licenses

  28. No Office Hours

    Internet down hard

  29. Utah Social Media Regulation Act

    two new laws on social media and children

  30. You Do Not Have a Shoe Size

    thirty-five years standing over a bad assumption

  31. On-Cloud Licensing

    the wheel of software delivery keeps on turning

  32. NVIDIA Prismer License

    another noncommercial model license, kind of

  33. Open Source Unsolved Security

    the pointy-headed corpo-types warned us

  34. Wikimedia’s Terms of Use

    thoughts from a recent review

  35. European Office Hours

    more scheduled for next month

  36. The Law Does Not Require Legalese

    a reassuring dive into contract interpretation

  37. Sneaking Things In

    yes, lawyers actually do this

  38. Open RAIL-M Is More Unclear Than Scary

    Does AI devs want to fight abuse, or just not feel bad about enabling it?

  39. Open Game License Version 1.2 Draft

    how to say “irrevocable” like you mean it when you just revoked everybody’s licenses

  40. Office Hours

    call in and ask me questions

  41. Type Error: “Democratizing”

    runaway sales speak hits the curb again

  42. Delayed Release in Investigative Reporting

    newsroom licensing strategy in familiar software terms

  43. This Rich To Open Source

    neglected Torvalds straight-talk on how great software gets made, and by who

  44. MicroHub Sponsorplace

    one software store, many corporate faces

  45. Open Market for Open Software

    coders who can’t afford to do open source will revolutionize software

  46. Notice by Hyperlink

    can’t we just link to the licenses file for our JavaScript?

  47. Waypoint NDA 4.0.0

    now with mergers and acquisitions terms

  48. Putting Software in the Public Domain

    if you want “waive” or “dedicate”, you should probably just “license”

  49. Trademark Undefined Behavior

    the awkward hole in free and open IP

  50. Thoughts on Web Footnotes

    links, notes, asides, details, and parentheticals

  51. Briefless Barristers and Lawyerless Clients

    future Supreme Court justice to young lawyers in 1939

  52. Time Off Summer ’22

    out of office August 7 through 20

  53. New Microsoft Word Comments Weirdness

    a gotcha for legal power users

  54. Legal Sources for Not-a-Lawyers

    learn some law without totally warping your brain

  55. Priest Against Priesthood

    father of FORTRAN on programming in the fifties

  56. The Work, the Tech, and the Crime

    blockchain deserves no regulatory favors

  57. Text Prudent

    what everyone should know about texting, chatting, and the law

  58. Max Korzh’s “His Home”

    a Russian-language rap translation

  59. Legal Versioning

    refined scheme for functional prose projects

  60. From Copy to Reference

    a plan to evolve legal drafting

  61. Zelensky Compound NDA

    the mystery of the ritual runs deeper than law

  62. Copy-and-Paste Goes to Russia

    lawyering by rote in the crazy 1990s

  63. EULAs Aren’t Inherently Evil

    proprietary done right can beat free and open for users

  64. HTML Scripting Tools

    a few free packages I’ve come to use

  65. The Russians Are Coming

    hire the nerds for peace, profit, and progress!

  66. FOSS Fundraiser for Ukraine?

    donors ask questions, panel of licensing lawyers answers

  67. The Open Source Initiative Did Not Win Neo4j v. PureThink

    everywhere it looks, OSI sees itself, and in triumph

  68. Getting the Most From Common Computer Filing Systems

    fundamental techniques for Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and others

  69. Russia’s “Fake News” Law

    a quick translation

  70. Switching Open Software Terms

    yes, you can switch from MIT to something else

  71. You And Whose GitHub?

    Russian tech source reports state mulling GitHub clone

  72. What Must Be Said

    Boris Grebenshchikov in London

  73. Russia to Legalize Software Piracy

    my show is canceled, business news reports

  74. Ukraine

    donate money against this horrible war

  75. Devs Use Closed Software

    too many devs pretend otherwise

  76. Universal Basic Cop-Out

    We know how to pay devs for software. Some of us just prefer not to.

  77. Software Pay Data 2020

    data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

  78. Be the Water Boy (or Girl!) for Your Neighborhood

    East Oakland Collective’s EBMUD hydrant meter is ready for action

  79. Big Time Public License 2.0.0

    much improved by generous feedback

  80. Second Draft of Waypoint for M&A

    refining acquisition-specific terms to the standard business NDA

  81. Fast Path

    cutting-edge legal terms for software license sales

  82. MIT for Noncommercial is Broken

    use a real noncommercial software license

  83. Payability, Form, and Substance

    getting company to pay you isn’t just about a legal entity

  84. To-Do List Polling

    event-based meatspace task management

  85. Pay the Fiddler

    pithy wisdom from days of yore

  86. Square One 2e1u

    addressing an interesting Utah peculiarity

  87. AWS Contributor Licensing Blurb

    another mutation from the cauldron of CLA angst

  88. What Do We Call Functional Specs for Legal Forms?

    seeking help naming a concept

  89. Waypoint for M&A

    adding acquisition-specific terms to the standard business NDA

  90. Correlation and Causation Symbols

    good shorthand against bad mental shortcuts

  91. Single CLA

    taking back contributor licensing for developers

  92. SaaS Compliance Caveats

    view page source ain’t what it used to be

  93. Blue Oak Open Software Licensing Primer

    Theory of Operation, updated and expanded

  94. Not My Law

    explainer page for cross-border legal help

  95. Specifically Regulating Standardized Contracting

    quick thoughts on the Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016

  96. All Heroes, No Casualties

    where are our stories of tech folks done wrong?

  97. The Kingsway Basic License

    hip hop terms through a software lens

  98. Hydrant Meter for the Homeless

    a giant step forward for East Oakland Collective and EBMUD

  99. Redlining in Microsoft Word 365

    a step-by-step guide to comparing legal drafts

  100. Square One Second Edition

    improved US hiring forms and terms

  101. GPL Had Better be a Contract

    SFC’s Vizio suit brings the right kind of claim

  102. PolyForm Commercial Does Individual Licenses Now

    expanding standardization to single-user deals

  103. Pinky Pressing Problem

    discovering and addressing a lapse in typing technique

  104. Signature Blocks 101

    what goes where and why, in brief

  105. L. Peter Deutsch and Stig Hackvän

    cooperation, licensing, and money in 1998

  106. Time Off Summer ’21

    out of office August 29 through September 8

  107. Help Fund Water for the Homeless

    legal access to public water for the East Bay’s unhoused

  108. Upgrading to Debian Bullseye

    a couple hurdles jumped

  109. Contract by E-Mail

    contract power is in your hands

  110. The Developer Certificate of Origin is Not a Contributor License Agreement

    dispelling magical DCO thinking to reveal the system below

  111. Standardize Commercial Software Licensing

    announcing PolyForm Commercial, with a call for help

  112. License Round-Up

    listing licenses I’ve contributed to

  113. Waypoint NDA 3.0.0

    small terms fixes, big presentation improvements

  114. In Praise of Cron

    seventies-era automation for the working lawyer

  115. Big Time Public License 1.0.0

    a FRAND-ly license for software

  116. Legal Explainer Sites

    one-page URLs for common concepts and conundrums

  117. 2020 Oakland Homeless Camp Fires

    data from public records request

  118. Creative Commons’ 2021-2025 Strategy

    a scene stalwart turns “ethical”

  119. The Guestbook NDA

    a standard one-way nondisclosure agreement

  120. 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report

    bold text from the key findings

  121. One-Way NDA

    good names for the next standard NDA?

  122. Citation Hustle

    hooking into academe for fair code credit

  123. Drafter’s Anxiety

    writing new licenses isn’t scary

  124. The Luck of Open Source

    open source without great men

  125. Legal Technology as Regulatory Arbitrage

    a countervailing force toward specialization

  126. Efficient Merit Apocalypse

    a mirror on meritocracy

  127. Sell Babel 8

    ask for the money you need so people can actually pay it

  128. Law Insider’s Contract Teardowns

    lawyers dissect specific contract language

  129. Days of Pain

    returning from a double bout of nerve pain

  130. Open Gaming Deja Vu

    a clear-eyed view of open from 1999

  131. First-Rate Intelligence

    false comfort in U.S. military spending

  132. Support Funding for Cali County Law Libraries

    they’re even more important during pandemic

  133. You Can Still Use the Software

    Justin Colannino on what’s up with new software licenses

  134. Zebra G-750 First Look

    a long-awaited pen arrives on US shores

  135. Flat Forms

    plain language should come in plain pieces

  136. Templating for Lawyers

    learn computer templateering in five minutes flat

  137. Seven Ways to Say “Inequality”

    a short study in the rhetoric of policy

  138. It’s a Trap

    avoid legal structures designed to constrain you

  139. The Origin of the “MIT License”

    how did those famous terms come about?

  140. Cross License Foundations

    decentralized stewardship of collaborative projects

  141. Code Credit License 1.0.0

    a code-for-credit software license

  142. Open Licensing Attacks on Specific Business Models

    an incomplete list

  143. Compliance Industrial Pulpit

    someone tell the enterprise about Open Source 2.0

  144. Where are the Goalposts?

    in response to Luis Villa on SSPL and OSI

  145. The Chalkeaters’ License

    effective folk licensing in the wild

  146. Waypoint Turns Two

    stop wasting time on nondisclosure agreements

  147. Platform Neutrality

    we used to have a principle for this

  148. Square One

    fair terms. free forms. back to work.

  149. Reading AGPL

    a guided introduction for first-timers

  150. Open Source is Discrimination

    that’s the point, or at least it used to be

  151. Righteous, Expedient, Wrong

    OSI swings at Elastic, misses, and leaves a mess

  152. Water Manifolds

    hydrant-based access for the homeless of the Tenderloin

  153. ml5.js Takes a Stand

    a code of conduct with teeth, in the wild

  154. We Are All Internet Realists Now

    web exceptionalism swings both ways

  155. Fake Neutrality

    have it your way ‘til they can afford to have it theirs

  156. The Tension

    panning for hope in a very angry America

  157. Printing Booklets

    less paper, easier reading

  158. No War on Coronavirus

    remembering the other way to see our problems

  159. Lies My Law School Told Me

    in praise of bad propaganda

  160. Don’t Pitch Lawyers

    pitch clients

  161. Deprogramming the Programmer

    throw off your jargon and be free

  162. Authority and Expertise

    digging up the land mines of attorney-client relations

  163. Survive America

    prepping for the obvious

  164. The Future of the Internet

    thanks for letting us know

  165. The War on License Notices

    managing uncertainty at the fringes of open licensing

  166. Don’t Sign Blank Checks

    a problem of pattern recognition

  167. Judicial Website, No Money Down

    sustainability, government style

  168. Water Team on The Oaklandside

    local news org covers water access proposals

  169. Electric, Light, Organized

    flameless light and power stopgaps for the homeless

  170. EBMUD for All

    open letter for homeless access to water

  171. Work Made for Hire … or Not

    one source of complexity in intellectual property terms

  172. Let’s Not All Read Terms of Service

    common quips on website terms miss the point

  173. You Have to Build a Time Machine

    Eventbrite falls into the terms of service trap

  174. How Congress Sees Open Source

    a view from outside

  175. Signing by E-Mail

    a writing is a writing is a writing

  176. Speedier Git for Text File Tracking

    streamlining for small, fast commits to personal records

  177. Doormat 1e

    free no-log, no-track privacy policy

  178. DMCASimple 1e

    another new first edition and website

  179. Turnstile 1e

    first edition and new website

  180. Copyright Notices Begone

    pointless costs of ancient licenses

  181. From Justice With Love

    the antitrust division groks open source strategy

  182. Communes to Cooperatives

    musings of a Drop City scholar

  183. Public Domain Appendix

    public license for From Dictatorship to Democracy

  184. Mix Many Metaphors

    analogies galore in Oracle v. Google oral argument

  185. Oracle v. Google Oral Argument

    major league copyright lawyering at bat

  186. The Ethical Consequences of Our Collective Activities

    professional ethics as the missing root of entitlement?

  187. California Welfare and Institutions Code 17000

    on the books since 1965

  188. Son of Water Boy

    latest lessons and tips

  189. Security Services Terms

    giving a specialized field its due

  190. Types of Lawyers

    major food groups for clients

  191. Amateur Open Econ Toolkit

    compendium of concepts, theories, and theorists

  192. Not the Type

    tech exceptionalism in limp words and phrases

  193. Working in Public

    now comes the coder-celebrity

  194. Connecticut’s Police Bill

    first-read highlights

  195. Water Boy

    working up a playbook for supplying urban campers

  196. A Modest Trademark Proposal

    banish them from permissive open source

  197. In Praise of Juanito Rus

    recognizing professionalism in local public service

  198. Colorado’s Police Reform Law

    first-read highlights

  199. Expert Failure

    lawyers learning from scientists

  200. Programmer Power

    prying open “software freedom”

  201. Threat Rhetoric

    narrative error in policing

  202. Police Qualified Immunity Reading

    recommended overview and primary sources

  203. No Justice

    facing the mirror in a time of inequality

  204. PolyForm Defensive is Now PolyForm Shield

    feedback strikes again

  205. Anything to Everyone

    “defund the police” through the lens of “open source”

  206. Narrative Error

    that’s my hero story, and I’m sticking to it

  207. Acceptable Use

    different delivery, same rules

  208. Facing the Choir

    reading and hearing American police unions

  209. Free & Open Picture Book

    a conundrum in four panels

  210. Normally Open & Normally Closed

    simple templates for restricted terms

  211. Oakland Police Commission

    money, gas, rubber, and “fuck”

  212. DMSimple

    plain and simple DMCA safe harbor terms

  213. The March in Oakland

    a flyover, firsthand account of rally and march

  214. Round Robin 1.0.0

    ready for the field

  215. Round Robin License

    new name, new terms, same great idea

  216. Protestant Work Product

    recognizing overwork in the field

  217. Turnstile

    springboard website terms of service

  218. Progressive Standardization

    standardized contracting can also be flexible

  219. PolyForm Noncompete Licenses

    two new, long-awaited forms

  220. Springboard Agreements

    putting a name to a tool

  221. Lawyerization

    vocabulary for lawyer involvement and influence

  222. “Open Source” Is Nobody’s Property

    if OSI owned it, they wouldn’t be so touchy about it

  223. Two Tiny Web Apps

    long-serving micro-groupware

  224. Name this Contract Type

    agreements incorporating all their terms by reference

  225. Allowable Tolerances

    law can learn a lot from the trades

  226. Antidote

    critical and alternative views on free and open source software

  227. Pay-Per-Law, Inc.

    the glory and agony of Georgia v. Public Resource

  228. Neighbor Meals

    ground game for safer group takeout

  229. redline.commonform.org

    compare Common Form markup online

  230. Common-Pool Pushovers

    Elinor Ostrom without boundaries

  231. edit.commonform.org

    try Common Form’s editing tools online

  232. Common Form, Simplified

    publish, share, save our souls

  233. Locked-In Customers Anonymous

    stop buying software from assholes

  234. No Thanks

    software freedom without programmers

  235. Site of Shame

    if you can’t negotiate, castigate?

  236. The Tote Bag

    remembering the Great Recession

  237. Do Not Track or Do Not Sell

    conflict or convenience?

  238. Open COVID Pledge

    public licensing for pandemic response

  239. Noncompete By Two Other Names

    Why are the last PolyForm licenses taking so long?

  240. Sharetribe Community Public License 1.0, Line by Line

    another everything-but-SaaS license

  241. Intelligent Perception

    low bow to the legal laity

  242. Take the Money and Run

    if you’re not hurting, try helping

  243. CERN OHL-S 2.0, Line by Line

    the open share-alike hardware license we actually need now?

  244. Section 1106 (Loan Forgiveness) of the CARES Act

    formatted, linked, and linkable

  245. Medtronic’s PB560 Ventilator License, Line by Line

    medical device company devises copyleft license

  246. Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment

    Californians probably can’t do advance directives right now, but that’s likely not what they need

  247. Against Legal Technology

    beyond the latest office software

  248. Open Source for Business 3e

    new edition of an oft-recommended book

  249. Subscribe by E-Mail

    another way to see new posts

  250. Sustain Podcast

    business models, licenses, role playing

  251. Not Those Dreams

    Nintendo purges Mario from Dreams

  252. California Medical Directives at Home

    Can we get our end-of-life wishes down without breaking health orders?

  253. Medical Advance Directives Working Group

    looking for lawyers, translators, and editors

  254. notlegaladvice.law

    shareable explainer page

  255. Blue Is Blue

    a strange thing about learned language

  256. World Tour Canceled

    mouse best plans, but what ado now?

  257. Name Calling Isn’t Precise

    “neo-closed” will come and go

  258. Terms of Service, Take Two

    shorter, higher-level, more fun

  259. Foreign Virus

    another good excuse to order in Chinese

  260. Terms of Service, Take One

    reviewing the terms you’ve already agreed to

  261. Copyleft Has No Posse

    war is over, want it or not

  262. Short Spiel on Legal Tech

    law’s retrograde rep is more about tech than law

  263. Dreams Creates a Commons?

    a video game for making video games

  264. Not Not Political

    if software matters, it’s already political

  265. This Mess We’re In

    ethics, open source, and free riding

  266. Skimming Hippocratic License Version 2.0

    text and quick thoughts

  267. Untangling Tech Merit and Tech Privilege

    section 230 is but one kind of subsidy

  268. More Accessible

    small tweaks to better accommodate readers

  269. Data Under Universal Share-Alike

    limits on effective data copyleft

  270. Reduce, Reuse, Reconsider

    if you wish to make a great hacker from scratch, let them reimplement the universe

  271. Patent Potato

    the game that never ends

  272. Scratch Other People’s Itches

    achieve more meaning and feel less alone

  273. Copyleft Should be Scary

    if the virus wasn’t scary, would we wash out hands?

  274. Portland Trip Confirmed

    February 23 to February 29

  275. Open Source Should Come With Warranties

    (from the companies who use it)

  276. CCPA Service Provider Addendum

    plain, minimal form

  277. What did I just agree to?

    Marc Jones on oddities in OSI-approved licenses

  278. Luis Villa’s Licensing Year in Review

    harassment made the list, and should have

  279. Portland in February

    See you there?

  280. Few-Maintainer Projects

    reality-driven expectations

  281. Renaming API Copyleft

    naming for purpose, not implementation

  282. Starting Noncommercial

    famous projects that started noncommercial

  283. API Copyleft 2.0.0-pre.1

    bringing the best of Parity to API Copyleft

  284. Video Footnotes

    one-way video as hackable interactive medium

  285. The Main Event

    Amazon versus Startups and the New York Times

  286. The Doorway NDA

    lawyers earning their stereotypes

  287. Paste Your Terms Into Your E-Mails

    why don’t we do the obvious thing?

  288. Teach Everyone to Be Like Us

    Moxie Marlinspike, wiser than he may have known

  289. git push is the Process

    permissionless license development now

  290. Big Time Public License

    a noncommercial, small-biz license with a big-biz fair terms guarantee

  291. Rakow 2019

    score one, illegal art people

  292. Correct and Intuitive Fairness

    How can a license say what “fair” is ahead of time?

  293. I Am Not Advising Legally

    smart people don’t understand lawyers’ disclaimers

  294. A Fistful of Services

    my go-to web applications and utilities

  295. TNR12 and Be There

    learning from others

  296. npm fund

    new subcommand and metadata standard

  297. Talking Points: Ethical Licenses

    collecting points and counterpoints

  298. Reading the WeAllJS Code of Conduct

    line-by-line and off-the-cuff

  299. XML versus JSON

    key quote form a great paper

  300. Universal Share-Alike License

    copyleft across different kinds of work

  301. Venture Capital Shill

    scapegoating free software’s failures

  302. Nomadic Lawyering

    office out, travel in?

  303. MulanPSL

    a new riff on the Apache patent bargain from China

  304. Heather Meeker on “Ethos Licensing”

    free and open is ethos licensing, too

  305. “BSD with PATENTS” and “BSD-2-Clause Plus Patent” are Not the Same

    similar licenses, very different receptions

  306. Love this License

    law brut with ASCII art

  307. Blue Oak Guide to Copyleft

    short introduction and license families

  308. Waypoint Trademark

    protecting the integrity of a standard form

  309. CASE Act Flythrough

    notes from a quick read of H.R. 2426

  310. Blue Oak Test Suite

    test cases for new public licenses

  311. Blue Oak Reading List

    reading list for lawyers new to open source

  312. XLC Building Blocks

    essential concepts and vocabulary for cross-license collaboratives

  313. Cross-License Collaboratives

    decentralizing contributor license agreements

  314. Standards, Patents, Open Source

    towards constructive collaboration across practice communities

  315. Blue Oak Guidance on Mergers and Acquisitions

    please stop paying me so much to fix reps and warranties

  316. No LICENSE

    they won’t see your funding plea if they never look

  317. Our Ethics, Not Yours

    in defense of Seth Vargo and morality-first licenses

  318. The Tyranny of Time

    licensing gives developers much-needed flexibility

  319. Open Core is Not a Good Story

    three better ways to express yourself and your company

  320. Open Legal Podcast?

    considering an open legal podcast

  321. Is this conference a good idea?

    forthcoming talk at a conference

  322. The Great Open Source Shake-Up

    more mandatory reading from Kate Downing

  323. Here Comes the CCPA

    my annotated copy of the statute

  324. Waypoint 2.0.0

    a more adaptable, international standard

  325. Changeblog

    a few thoughts on a friend’s podcast appearance

  326. Require Credit For Your Software

    a general-purpose legal tool to require credit for open work

  327. Waypoint Abroad

    seeking quick reads from non-US counsel

  328. PANDA for Privacy

    the NDA for your personal information

  329. PolyForm 1.0.0

    standard noncommercial software licenses at last

  330. Heather Meeker on Patent Risk Allocation

    unique compilation of arguments and dynamics

  331. Get In, Get Out

    open source advice for new programmers breaking into the industry

  332. Help Take the Waypoint NDA International

    a call for help from common-law colleagues

  333. Open Letters

    a snail mail experiment

  334. A Twit No More

    farewell, Twitter

  335. Dark Arts at Daybreak

    the end of club rule in open source law

  336. Operating Environment

    essential industry background for reading open software licenses

  337. SSPL Was Not Commons Clause

    how open licensing blew its biggest opportunity of the 2010s

  338. PolyForm Project

    simple, standard, plain-language software licenses

  339. Mortarboard Licenses

    graduate to new public license terms

  340. Schools of Cohesion

    exploring the crosswise policy biases we learn from open software

  341. Prone Blogging Setup

    how to type when the pain puts you on your back

  342. Tyranny of Permissionlessness

    open source’s narrow focus further empowers those with other ways to exclude

  343. Don’t Rely on OSI Approval

    activist approval does not track practical needs

  344. AFL-3.0 versus OSL-3.0

    a redline (diff) with important network terms highlighted

  345. The Waypoint NDA

    stop wasting time on NDAs

  346. #wontfix

    endorsements can’t fix the Open Source Definition

  347. Calls to Sustainability Action via package.json

    a new proposal, schema, and tools

  348. Enterprise Ready Open Software License Supplement

    the status quo, plus money for devs

  349. Stairway to Heaven

    repairing broken steps to software license Nirvana

  350. The Diachronic Treadmill License

    automatically reward supporters with copyleft exceptions

  351. License Utopia

    just four licenses for all of open source

  352. Ethical Subcommons Starter Kit

    bringing openness to software of moral concern

  353. Weak or Strong is Wrong

    towards selective or consistent copyleft

  354. Deprecation Notice: MIT and BSD

    it’s time to retire thirty-year-old academic licenses

  355. Blue Oak Council

    opening the software commons to everyone

  356. Back to IP

    the copyright giant has a policy

  357. Indie Open Source

    developing resource for indie-ready business models

  358. Open Source Software License Reading List

    a comprehensive curriculum for new license wonks

  359. First Thoughts on the Redis Source Available License Agreement

    evident demand for license rules on API boundaries

  360. API Copyleft License 1.0.0

    first release of API-boundary copyleft form

  361. API Copyleft

    functionality, interfaces, and line drawing in a new copyleft paradigm

  362. Critique This License

    developing a standard paid-software license

  363. Shared Component License

    first shot at a short, plain license in the vein of Mongo’s SSPL

  364. Outer Source

    open software by closed methods

  365. The Discipline of Stated Purpose

    write out the purposes of legal terms in contracts

  366. Availability Dashboard

    professional availability now online

  367. Apache-2.0 versus ECL-2.0

    a redline (diff) showing substantive changes

  368. Open Source is Not About You

    a minimal, functionalist view of open source

  369. Open Handicaps

    Did permissive used to advantage open work like copyleft does today?

  370. Selective Openness

    making money by choosing what to give away

  371. The Open Source Definition as Copyleft Regulation

    an in-depth review of commonly cited criteria

  372. The Copyleft Bust Up

    loopholes, licenses, and realpolitik in open source

  373. How to Speak Copyleft

    the missing vocabulary of copyleft design

  374. Elsewhere: Mapping Open Business Models

    crosspost from the License Zero blog

  375. Seeking Comment: Copyright Notice Recommendation

    first stab at a pragmatic best-practice guide

  376. A Canting Tribe Are We

    attacking the NDA problem with standards networks

  377. Indirect Licensing

    dispensing software licenses in the Internet era

  378. Contributor Councils

    relicensing without foundation, BDFL, or unanimity

  379. Motorcycles in the Wind

    do not do or die

  380. Patents for Software Freedom

    gun-shy insurgents and the heavy weapons of IP law

  381. Bilking Angels

    celestial finance for earth-bound developers

  382. Crowd Hiring

    assurance contracts for short-term open software maintenance

  383. Quick Read of Tidelift’s Lifting Agreement

    nits picked in the developer terms for a new pay-the-devs company

  384. Private Changes in Free Software Copyleft Licenses

    Where’s the fifth freedom?

  385. Enforce Open Source Licenses with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

    takedown power for DIY developers

  386. Unhappy Coincidences

    marriages of licensing convenience, and changed circumstances

  387. Selective Mythology

    defining open source for fun and profit, in the shadow of the enterprise

  388. Attending LegalHackers Summit

  389. The Decentralization Game

    tips for values-forward reformers

  390. The Posterity Public License

    a strong-attribution open source license

  391. Interviewed on Open Source and Money

    TechCrunch article on problems and solutions

  392. Digging Contracts Out of the Hole

    simple tools for drafting to be proud of

  393. California Work Made for Hire Statutes

    work made for hire contracts can make contractors employees for state employment insurance purposes

  394. Plain GDPR Processor Addendum

    open form plain-language processor addendum

  395. Plain Terms of Service

    open form terms of service for websites

  396. Proseline

    peer to peer prose editing

  397. Six Great Deals Books

    read these books

  398. Public Domain Chronicle

    a fast, easy, and free way to secure scientific methods and findings for the public domain

  399. Help Wanted

    kinds of help I could use

  400. Transparent Contract Components

    sharper tools, finer toolmarks

  401. MPL-2.0 versus OPL-2.1

    a redline (diff) showing changes

  402. Lexical Scope for Contracts

    wandering ever closer to LISP

  403. I Have Another Blog

    you may want to subscribe on License Zero, too

  404. Licence Libre du Québec – Réciprocité versus - Réciprocité forte

    a redline (diff) showing changes

  405. CLAs are Not a Sham

    licensing with friends, improved and improving

  406. The Well Appointed Skinner Box

    farewell, Medium

  407. Contract Components

    fine-grained means of abstraction in legal drafting

  408. Debian Free Software Guidelines versus the Open Source Definition

    a redline (diff) showing changes

  409. Mercenary Rapport

    moral blindness in open source on social media

  410. Unsustainability at Scale

    today’s tools for yesterday’s problems tomorrow

  411. Feed this Bear

    indie coder, promote thyself!

  412. Overkill

    doing IP law wrong, and getting away with it

  413. The License Zero Manifesto

    sustainable software in the open

  414. Prescription Contracts

    thinking about direct lawyer guidance on rxnda.com

  415. Null Value

    against demise of the hacker public license

  416. Nobody’s Clients

  417. RxNDA.com

    breaking the NDA logjam

  418. Seven Takeaways from the SEC DAO Report

    reading the tea leaves of the Commission’s first major ICO report

  419. Switchmode Developer Agreement

    an open form contract for open source contractors

  420. Open Software Service Terms

    legal terms for paid web apps, now available in the English language

  421. It’s Not About Community

    another view of Open Source

  422. Open Source: Theory of Operation

    a short, practical guide to open source software for programmers at work

  423. Debian 8.7 on Dell Optiplex 7010

  424. Open Source License Business Perception Report

    the pain and confusion of common open licenses, roughly quantified

  425. Against Legislating the Nonobvious

    short-order feedback on the default contributor license in GitHub’s draft terms of service

  426. The Mendicant Maintainerati

    no holy fools for Open Source

  427. The MIT License, Line by Line

    171 words every programmer should understand

  428. The Earl of Ethereum’s Case

    Who keeps a blockchain’s conscience?

  429. Deal Mechanic

    The writing on the door.

  430. Emancipation by Reference

    I am just a copy of a copy of a copy. Everything I say you have read before.

  431. Node.js Streams

    fundamental abstractions reviewed and revisited

  432. IP Field Guide

    publicly licensed, publicly available intro for non-lawyers

  433. The JavaScript Joke Was on Me

    or, a few things learned the hard way

  434. Circulation Policy

    Confidentiality rules and procedures for the great Common Form library in the sky

  435. Annotations in Context

    A first attempt at useful, responsible Common Form annotations

  436. I Don’t Want to Know What “Open Source” Means

    I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all on GitHub.

  437. License from Who?

    Safe open-source licensing means more than a LICENSE file.

  438. The Triplebyte Plan

    The tangled web of one start-up equity plan

  439. The Berneout Pledge

    Sucks less than CLAs!

  440. First Read: The Fair Source License

    Text and my first thoughts on a new, non-open source form license

  441. I’ll Never Be a Super Lawyer

    In feigned ignorance there is no grace.

  442. Startup Unix

    An open legal operating system for start-up technology companies

  443. What Enumeration Means

    Enumeration is an essential contract drafting tool. Don’t disclaim it!

  444. Template Ambiguity

    Document assembly can make ambiguity even harder to spot.

  445. The Blanks Problem

    A tough Common Form design decision explained.

  446. Term Injection

    Fighting insertion of unexpected terms in automated form contracts

  447. React Patent Redline

    Changes to Facebook’s patent grant for React, Flux, Immutable, &c.

  448. Certificated Assent

    How signed is signed enough for a hosted software licensing deal?

  449. Hacking Common Form

    Overview of existing Common Form software for programmers

  450. Terms of Service; Already Read

    Verifiable contracts should help consumers, too.

  451. Reproduction of Hierarchy

    Markdown isn’t great for contracts. HTML5 is better.

  452. Index Card Contracts

    Common Form for paper people

  453. Grab-Bag Contracts

    Might we write contracts like we fill shopping bags at the grocery store?

  454. Named Provisions

    If contract section numbers are just another namespace, can they be replaced with defined terms?

  455. vesting.js

    From code to law and back again

  456. Blind Patches

    What if open-source contributors could submit patches anonymously and choose to claim credit later?

  457. Modularity is not the Law

    Ancient and modern principles of contract interpretation work against contracts made of modular parts

  458. The Halliburton Hypothesis

    Quantifying the negotiating process to mount attacks on the confidentiality of a public contract forms repository

  459. Value Statement

    as found at the feet of my bills

  460. FTC 2014 Year in Review

    What do the FTC’s 2014 privacy and security enforcement actions teach tech companies?

  461. Common Form

    Composable, verifiable, shareable form contracts for the modern practice of law

  462. deflect.js

    An ECMAScript module fusing Node.js error-first convention with continuation passing style, plus a twist to make composed stacks of asynchronous functions dynamic

  463. Deep Data Privacy Risk

    Cheap storage technology isn’t just changing what information we store; it’s also changing how we store familiar kinds of information. Both developments have implications for privacy.