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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. European Office Hours

    more scheduled for next month

  2. The Law Does Not Require Legalese

    a reassuring dive into contract interpretation

  3. Sneaking Things In

    yes, lawyers actually do this

  4. Open RAIL-M Is More Unclear Than Scary

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

  5. Open Game License Version 1.2 Draft

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

  6. Office Hours

    call in and ask me questions

  7. Type Error: “Democratizing”

    runaway sales speak hits the curb again

  8. Delayed Release in Investigative Reporting

    newsroom licensing strategy in familiar software terms

  9. This Rich To Open Source

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

  10. MicroHub Sponsorplace

    one software store, many corporate faces

  11. Open Market for Open Software

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

  12. Notice by Hyperlink

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

  13. Waypoint NDA 4.0.0

    now with mergers and acquisitions terms

  14. Putting Software in the Public Domain

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

  15. Trademark Undefined Behavior

    the awkward hole in free and open IP

  16. Thoughts on Web Footnotes

    links, notes, asides, details, and parentheticals

  17. Briefless Barristers and Lawyerless Clients

    future Supreme Court justice to young lawyers in 1939

  18. Time Off Summer ’22

    out of office August 7 through 20

  19. New Microsoft Word Comments Weirdness

    a gotcha for legal power users

  20. Legal Sources for Not-a-Lawyers

    learn some law without totally warping your brain

  21. Priest Against Priesthood

    father of FORTRAN on programming in the fifties

  22. The Work, the Tech, and the Crime

    blockchain deserves no regulatory favors

  23. Text Prudent

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

  24. Max Korzh’s “His Home”

    a Russian-language rap translation

  25. Legal Versioning

    refined scheme for functional prose projects

  26. From Copy to Reference

    a plan to evolve legal drafting

  27. Zelensky Compound NDA

    the mystery of the ritual runs deeper than law

  28. Copy-and-Paste Goes to Russia

    lawyering by rote in the crazy 1990s

  29. EULAs Aren’t Inherently Evil

    proprietary done right can beat free and open for users

  30. HTML Scripting Tools

    a few free packages I’ve come to use

  31. The Russians Are Coming

    hire the nerds for peace, profit, and progress!

  32. FOSS Fundraiser for Ukraine?

    donors ask questions, panel of licensing lawyers answers

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

    everywhere it looks, OSI sees itself, and in triumph

  34. Getting the Most From Common Computer Filing Systems

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

  35. Russia’s “Fake News” Law

    a quick translation

  36. Switching Open Software Terms

    yes, you can switch from MIT to something else

  37. You And Whose GitHub?

    Russian tech source reports state mulling GitHub clone

  38. What Must Be Said

    Boris Grebenshchikov in London

  39. Russia to Legalize Software Piracy

    my show is canceled, business news reports

  40. Ukraine

    donate money against this horrible war

  41. Devs Use Closed Software

    too many devs pretend otherwise

  42. Universal Basic Cop-Out

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

  43. Software Pay Data 2020

    data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

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

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

  45. Big Time Public License 2.0.0

    much improved by generous feedback

  46. Second Draft of Waypoint for M&A

    refining acquisition-specific terms to the standard business NDA

  47. Fast Path

    cutting-edge legal terms for software license sales

  48. MIT for Noncommercial is Broken

    use a real noncommercial software license

  49. Payability, Form, and Substance

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

  50. To-Do List Polling

    event-based meatspace task management

  51. Pay the Fiddler

    pithy wisdom from days of yore

  52. Square One 2e1u

    addressing an interesting Utah peculiarity

  53. AWS Contributor Licensing Blurb

    another mutation from the cauldron of CLA angst

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

    seeking help naming a concept

  55. Waypoint for M&A

    adding acquisition-specific terms to the standard business NDA

  56. Correlation and Causation Symbols

    good shorthand against bad mental shortcuts

  57. Single CLA

    taking back contributor licensing for developers

  58. SaaS Compliance Caveats

    view page source ain’t what it used to be

  59. Blue Oak Open Software Licensing Primer

    Theory of Operation, updated and expanded

  60. Not My Law

    explainer page for cross-border legal help

  61. Specifically Regulating Standardized Contracting

    quick thoughts on the Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016

  62. All Heroes, No Casualties

    where are our stories of tech folks done wrong?

  63. The Kingsway Basic License

    hip hop terms through a software lens

  64. Hydrant Meter for the Homeless

    a giant step forward for East Oakland Collective and EBMUD

  65. Redlining in Microsoft Word 365

    a step-by-step guide to comparing legal drafts

  66. Square One Second Edition

    improved US hiring forms and terms

  67. GPL Had Better be a Contract

    SFC’s Vizio suit brings the right kind of claim

  68. PolyForm Commercial Does Individual Licenses Now

    expanding standardization to single-user deals

  69. Pinky Pressing Problem

    discovering and addressing a lapse in typing technique

  70. Signature Blocks 101

    what goes where and why, in brief

  71. L. Peter Deutsch and Stig Hackvän

    cooperation, licensing, and money in 1998

  72. Time Off Summer ’21

    out of office August 29 through September 8

  73. Help Fund Water for the Homeless

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

  74. Upgrading to Debian Bullseye

    a couple hurdles jumped

  75. Contract by E-Mail

    contract power is in your hands

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

    dispelling magical DCO thinking to reveal the system below

  77. Standardize Commercial Software Licensing

    announcing PolyForm Commercial, with a call for help

  78. License Round-Up

    listing licenses I’ve contributed to

  79. Waypoint NDA 3.0.0

    small terms fixes, big presentation improvements

  80. In Praise of Cron

    seventies-era automation for the working lawyer

  81. Big Time Public License 1.0.0

    a FRAND-ly license for software

  82. Legal Explainer Sites

    one-page URLs for common concepts and conundrums

  83. 2020 Oakland Homeless Camp Fires

    data from public records request

  84. Creative Commons’ 2021-2025 Strategy

    a scene stalwart turns “ethical”

  85. The Guestbook NDA

    a standard one-way nondisclosure agreement

  86. 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report

    bold text from the key findings

  87. One-Way NDA

    good names for the next standard NDA?

  88. Citation Hustle

    hooking into academe for fair code credit

  89. Drafter’s Anxiety

    writing new licenses isn’t scary

  90. The Luck of Open Source

    open source without great men

  91. Legal Technology as Regulatory Arbitrage

    a countervailing force toward specialization

  92. Efficient Merit Apocalypse

    a mirror on meritocracy

  93. Sell Babel 8

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

  94. Law Insider’s Contract Teardowns

    lawyers dissect specific contract language

  95. Days of Pain

    returning from a double bout of nerve pain

  96. Open Gaming Deja Vu

    a clear-eyed view of open from 1999

  97. First-Rate Intelligence

    false comfort in U.S. military spending

  98. Support Funding for Cali County Law Libraries

    they’re even more important during pandemic

  99. You Can Still Use the Software

    Justin Colannino on what’s up with new software licenses

  100. Zebra G-750 First Look

    a long-awaited pen arrives on US shores

  101. Flat Forms

    plain language should come in plain pieces

  102. Templating for Lawyers

    learn computer templateering in five minutes flat

  103. Seven Ways to Say “Inequality”

    a short study in the rhetoric of policy

  104. It’s a Trap

    avoid legal structures designed to constrain you

  105. The Origin of the “MIT License”

    how did those famous terms come about?

  106. Cross License Foundations

    decentralized stewardship of collaborative projects

  107. Code Credit License 1.0.0

    a code-for-credit software license

  108. Open Licensing Attacks on Specific Business Models

    an incomplete list

  109. Compliance Industrial Pulpit

    someone tell the enterprise about Open Source 2.0

  110. Where are the Goalposts?

    in response to Luis Villa on SSPL and OSI

  111. The Chalkeaters’ License

    effective folk licensing in the wild

  112. Waypoint Turns Two

    stop wasting time on nondisclosure agreements

  113. Platform Neutrality

    we used to have a principle for this

  114. Square One

    fair terms. free forms. back to work.

  115. Reading AGPL

    a guided introduction for first-timers

  116. Open Source is Discrimination

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

  117. Righteous, Expedient, Wrong

    OSI swings at Elastic, misses, and leaves a mess

  118. Water Manifolds

    hydrant-based access for the homeless of the Tenderloin

  119. ml5.js Takes a Stand

    a code of conduct with teeth, in the wild

  120. We Are All Internet Realists Now

    web exceptionalism swings both ways

  121. Fake Neutrality

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

  122. The Tension

    panning for hope in a very angry America

  123. Printing Booklets

    less paper, easier reading

  124. No War on Coronavirus

    remembering the other way to see our problems

  125. Lies My Law School Told Me

    in praise of bad propaganda

  126. Don’t Pitch Lawyers

    pitch clients

  127. Deprogramming the Programmer

    throw off your jargon and be free

  128. Authority and Expertise

    digging up the land mines of attorney-client relations

  129. Survive America

    prepping for the obvious

  130. The Future of the Internet

    thanks for letting us know

  131. The War on License Notices

    managing uncertainty at the fringes of open licensing

  132. Don’t Sign Blank Checks

    a problem of pattern recognition

  133. Judicial Website, No Money Down

    sustainability, government style

  134. Water Team on The Oaklandside

    local news org covers water access proposals

  135. Electric, Light, Organized

    flameless light and power stopgaps for the homeless

  136. EBMUD for All

    open letter for homeless access to water

  137. Work Made for Hire … or Not

    one source of complexity in intellectual property terms

  138. Let’s Not All Read Terms of Service

    common quips on website terms miss the point

  139. You Have to Build a Time Machine

    Eventbrite falls into the terms of service trap

  140. How Congress Sees Open Source

    a view from outside

  141. Signing by E-Mail

    a writing is a writing is a writing

  142. Speedier Git for Text File Tracking

    streamlining for small, fast commits to personal records

  143. Doormat 1e

    free no-log, no-track privacy policy

  144. DMCASimple 1e

    another new first edition and website

  145. Turnstile 1e

    first edition and new website

  146. Copyright Notices Begone

    pointless costs of ancient licenses

  147. From Justice With Love

    the antitrust division groks open source strategy

  148. Communes to Cooperatives

    musings of a Drop City scholar

  149. Public Domain Appendix

    public license for From Dictatorship to Democracy

  150. Mix Many Metaphors

    analogies galore in Oracle v. Google oral argument

  151. Oracle v. Google Oral Argument

    major league copyright lawyering at bat

  152. The Ethical Consequences of Our Collective Activities

    professional ethics as the missing root of entitlement?

  153. California Welfare and Institutions Code 17000

    on the books since 1965

  154. Son of Water Boy

    latest lessons and tips

  155. Security Services Terms

    giving a specialized field its due

  156. Types of Lawyers

    major food groups for clients

  157. Amateur Open Econ Toolkit

    compendium of concepts, theories, and theorists

  158. Not the Type

    tech exceptionalism in limp words and phrases

  159. Working in Public

    now comes the coder-celebrity

  160. Connecticut’s Police Bill

    first-read highlights

  161. Water Boy

    working up a playbook for supplying urban campers

  162. A Modest Trademark Proposal

    banish them from permissive open source

  163. In Praise of Juanito Rus

    recognizing professionalism in local public service

  164. Colorado’s Police Reform Law

    first-read highlights

  165. Expert Failure

    lawyers learning from scientists

  166. Programmer Power

    prying open “software freedom”

  167. Threat Rhetoric

    narrative error in policing

  168. Police Qualified Immunity Reading

    recommended overview and primary sources

  169. No Justice

    facing the mirror in a time of inequality

  170. PolyForm Defensive is Now PolyForm Shield

    feedback strikes again

  171. Anything to Everyone

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

  172. Narrative Error

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

  173. Acceptable Use

    different delivery, same rules

  174. Facing the Choir

    reading and hearing American police unions

  175. Free & Open Picture Book

    a conundrum in four panels

  176. Normally Open & Normally Closed

    simple templates for restricted terms

  177. Oakland Police Commission

    money, gas, rubber, and “fuck”

  178. DMSimple

    plain and simple DMCA safe harbor terms

  179. The March in Oakland

    a flyover, firsthand account of rally and march

  180. Round Robin 1.0.0

    ready for the field

  181. Round Robin License

    new name, new terms, same great idea

  182. Protestant Work Product

    recognizing overwork in the field

  183. Turnstile

    springboard website terms of service

  184. Progressive Standardization

    standardized contracting can also be flexible

  185. PolyForm Noncompete Licenses

    two new, long-awaited forms

  186. Springboard Agreements

    putting a name to a tool

  187. Lawyerization

    vocabulary for lawyer involvement and influence

  188. “Open Source” Is Nobody’s Property

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

  189. Two Tiny Web Apps

    long-serving micro-groupware

  190. Name this Contract Type

    agreements incorporating all their terms by reference

  191. Allowable Tolerances

    law can learn a lot from the trades

  192. Antidote

    critical and alternative views on free and open source software

  193. Pay-Per-Law, Inc.

    the glory and agony of Georgia v. Public Resource

  194. Neighbor Meals

    ground game for safer group takeout

  195. redline.commonform.org

    compare Common Form markup online

  196. Common-Pool Pushovers

    Elinor Ostrom without boundaries

  197. edit.commonform.org

    try Common Form’s editing tools online

  198. Common Form, Simplified

    publish, share, save our souls

  199. Locked-In Customers Anonymous

    stop buying software from assholes

  200. No Thanks

    software freedom without programmers

  201. Site of Shame

    if you can’t negotiate, castigate?

  202. The Tote Bag

    remembering the Great Recession

  203. Do Not Track or Do Not Sell

    conflict or convenience?

  204. Open COVID Pledge

    public licensing for pandemic response

  205. Noncompete By Two Other Names

    Why are the last PolyForm licenses taking so long?

  206. Sharetribe Community Public License 1.0, Line by Line

    another everything-but-SaaS license

  207. Intelligent Perception

    low bow to the legal laity

  208. Take the Money and Run

    if you’re not hurting, try helping

  209. CERN OHL-S 2.0, Line by Line

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

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

    formatted, linked, and linkable

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

    medical device company devises copyleft license

  212. Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment

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

  213. Against Legal Technology

    beyond the latest office software

  214. Open Source for Business 3e

    new edition of an oft-recommended book

  215. Subscribe by E-Mail

    another way to see new posts

  216. Sustain Podcast

    business models, licenses, role playing

  217. Not Those Dreams

    Nintendo purges Mario from Dreams

  218. California Medical Directives at Home

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

  219. Medical Advance Directives Working Group

    looking for lawyers, translators, and editors

  220. notlegaladvice.law

    shareable explainer page

  221. Blue Is Blue

    a strange thing about learned language

  222. World Tour Canceled

    mouse best plans, but what ado now?

  223. Name Calling Isn’t Precise

    “neo-closed” will come and go

  224. Terms of Service, Take Two

    shorter, higher-level, more fun

  225. Foreign Virus

    another good excuse to order in Chinese

  226. Terms of Service, Take One

    reviewing the terms you’ve already agreed to

  227. Copyleft Has No Posse

    war is over, want it or not

  228. Short Spiel on Legal Tech

    law’s retrograde rep is more about tech than law

  229. Dreams Creates a Commons?

    a video game for making video games

  230. Not Not Political

    if software matters, it’s already political

  231. This Mess We’re In

    ethics, open source, and free riding

  232. Skimming Hippocratic License Version 2.0

    text and quick thoughts

  233. Untangling Tech Merit and Tech Privilege

    section 230 is but one kind of subsidy

  234. More Accessible

    small tweaks to better accommodate readers

  235. Data Under Universal Share-Alike

    limits on effective data copyleft

  236. Reduce, Reuse, Reconsider

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

  237. Patent Potato

    the game that never ends

  238. Scratch Other People’s Itches

    achieve more meaning and feel less alone

  239. Copyleft Should be Scary

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

  240. Portland Trip Confirmed

    February 23 to February 29

  241. Open Source Should Come With Warranties

    (from the companies who use it)

  242. CCPA Service Provider Addendum

    plain, minimal form

  243. What did I just agree to?

    Marc Jones on oddities in OSI-approved licenses

  244. Luis Villa’s Licensing Year in Review

    harassment made the list, and should have

  245. Portland in February

    See you there?

  246. Few-Maintainer Projects

    reality-driven expectations

  247. Renaming API Copyleft

    naming for purpose, not implementation

  248. Starting Noncommercial

    famous projects that started noncommercial

  249. API Copyleft 2.0.0-pre.1

    bringing the best of Parity to API Copyleft

  250. Video Footnotes

    one-way video as hackable interactive medium

  251. The Main Event

    Amazon versus Startups and the New York Times

  252. The Doorway NDA

    lawyers earning their stereotypes

  253. Paste Your Terms Into Your E-Mails

    why don’t we do the obvious thing?

  254. Teach Everyone to Be Like Us

    Moxie Marlinspike, wiser than he may have known

  255. git push is the Process

    permissionless license development now

  256. Big Time Public License

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

  257. Rakow 2019

    score one, illegal art people

  258. Correct and Intuitive Fairness

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

  259. I Am Not Advising Legally

    smart people don’t understand lawyers’ disclaimers

  260. A Fistful of Services

    my go-to web applications and utilities

  261. TNR12 and Be There

    learning from others

  262. npm fund

    new subcommand and metadata standard

  263. Talking Points: Ethical Licenses

    collecting points and counterpoints

  264. Reading the WeAllJS Code of Conduct

    line-by-line and off-the-cuff

  265. XML versus JSON

    key quote form a great paper

  266. Universal Share-Alike License

    copyleft across different kinds of work

  267. Venture Capital Shill

    scapegoating free software’s failures

  268. Nomadic Lawyering

    office out, travel in?

  269. MulanPSL

    a new riff on the Apache patent bargain from China

  270. Heather Meeker on “Ethos Licensing”

    free and open is ethos licensing, too

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

    similar licenses, very different receptions

  272. Love this License

    law brut with ASCII art

  273. Blue Oak Guide to Copyleft

    short introduction and license families

  274. Waypoint Trademark

    protecting the integrity of a standard form

  275. CASE Act Flythrough

    notes from a quick read of H.R. 2426

  276. Blue Oak Test Suite

    test cases for new public licenses

  277. Blue Oak Reading List

    reading list for lawyers new to open source

  278. XLC Building Blocks

    essential concepts and vocabulary for cross-license collaboratives

  279. Cross-License Collaboratives

    decentralizing contributor license agreements

  280. Standards, Patents, Open Source

    towards constructive collaboration across practice communities

  281. Blue Oak Guidance on Mergers and Acquisitions

    please stop paying me so much to fix reps and warranties

  282. No LICENSE

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

  283. Our Ethics, Not Yours

    in defense of Seth Vargo and morality-first licenses

  284. The Tyranny of Time

    licensing gives developers much-needed flexibility

  285. Open Core is Not a Good Story

    three better ways to express yourself and your company

  286. Open Legal Podcast?

    considering an open legal podcast

  287. Is this conference a good idea?

    forthcoming talk at a conference

  288. The Great Open Source Shake-Up

    more mandatory reading from Kate Downing

  289. Here Comes the CCPA

    my annotated copy of the statute

  290. Waypoint 2.0.0

    a more adaptable, international standard

  291. Changeblog

    a few thoughts on a friend’s podcast appearance

  292. Require Credit For Your Software

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

  293. Waypoint Abroad

    seeking quick reads from non-US counsel

  294. PANDA for Privacy

    the NDA for your personal information

  295. PolyForm 1.0.0

    standard noncommercial software licenses at last

  296. Heather Meeker on Patent Risk Allocation

    unique compilation of arguments and dynamics

  297. Get In, Get Out

    open source advice for new programmers breaking into the industry

  298. Help Take the Waypoint NDA International

    a call for help from common-law colleagues

  299. Open Letters

    a snail mail experiment

  300. A Twit No More

    farewell, Twitter

  301. Dark Arts at Daybreak

    the end of club rule in open source law

  302. Operating Environment

    essential industry background for reading open software licenses

  303. SSPL Was Not Commons Clause

    how open licensing blew its biggest opportunity of the 2010s

  304. PolyForm Project

    simple, standard, plain-language software licenses

  305. Mortarboard Licenses

    graduate to new public license terms

  306. Schools of Cohesion

    exploring the crosswise policy biases we learn from open software

  307. Prone Blogging Setup

    how to type when the pain puts you on your back

  308. Tyranny of Permissionlessness

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

  309. Don’t Rely on OSI Approval

    activist approval does not track practical needs

  310. AFL-3.0 versus OSL-3.0

    a redline (diff) with important network terms highlighted

  311. The Waypoint NDA

    stop wasting time on NDAs

  312. #wontfix

    endorsements can’t fix the Open Source Definition

  313. Calls to Sustainability Action via package.json

    a new proposal, schema, and tools

  314. Enterprise Ready Open Software License Supplement

    the status quo, plus money for devs

  315. Stairway to Heaven

    repairing broken steps to software license Nirvana

  316. The Diachronic Treadmill License

    automatically reward supporters with copyleft exceptions

  317. License Utopia

    just four licenses for all of open source

  318. Ethical Subcommons Starter Kit

    bringing openness to software of moral concern

  319. Weak or Strong is Wrong

    towards selective or consistent copyleft

  320. Deprecation Notice: MIT and BSD

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

  321. Blue Oak Council

    opening the software commons to everyone

  322. Back to IP

    the copyright giant has a policy

  323. Indie Open Source

    developing resource for indie-ready business models

  324. Open Source Software License Reading List

    a comprehensive curriculum for new license wonks

  325. First Thoughts on the Redis Source Available License Agreement

    evident demand for license rules on API boundaries

  326. API Copyleft License 1.0.0

    first release of API-boundary copyleft form

  327. API Copyleft

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

  328. Critique This License

    developing a standard paid-software license

  329. Shared Component License

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

  330. Outer Source

    open software by closed methods

  331. The Discipline of Stated Purpose

    write out the purposes of legal terms in contracts

  332. Availability Dashboard

    professional availability now online

  333. Apache-2.0 versus ECL-2.0

    a redline (diff) showing substantive changes

  334. Open Source is Not About You

    a minimal, functionalist view of open source

  335. Open Handicaps

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

  336. Selective Openness

    making money by choosing what to give away

  337. The Open Source Definition as Copyleft Regulation

    an in-depth review of commonly cited criteria

  338. The Copyleft Bust Up

    loopholes, licenses, and realpolitik in open source

  339. How to Speak Copyleft

    the missing vocabulary of copyleft design

  340. Elsewhere: Mapping Open Business Models

    crosspost from the License Zero blog

  341. Seeking Comment: Copyright Notice Recommendation

    first stab at a pragmatic best-practice guide

  342. A Canting Tribe Are We

    attacking the NDA problem with standards networks

  343. Indirect Licensing

    dispensing software licenses in the Internet era

  344. Contributor Councils

    relicensing without foundation, BDFL, or unanimity

  345. Motorcycles in the Wind

    do not do or die

  346. Patents for Software Freedom

    gun-shy insurgents and the heavy weapons of IP law

  347. Bilking Angels

    celestial finance for earth-bound developers

  348. Crowd Hiring

    assurance contracts for short-term open software maintenance

  349. Quick Read of Tidelift’s Lifting Agreement

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

  350. Private Changes in Free Software Copyleft Licenses

    Where’s the fifth freedom?

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

    takedown power for DIY developers

  352. Unhappy Coincidences

    marriages of licensing convenience, and changed circumstances

  353. Selective Mythology

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

  354. Attending LegalHackers Summit

  355. The Decentralization Game

    tips for values-forward reformers

  356. The Posterity Public License

    a strong-attribution open source license

  357. Interviewed on Open Source and Money

    TechCrunch article on problems and solutions

  358. Digging Contracts Out of the Hole

    simple tools for drafting to be proud of

  359. California Work Made for Hire Statutes

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

  360. Plain GDPR Processor Addendum

    open form plain-language processor addendum

  361. Plain Terms of Service

    open form terms of service for websites

  362. Proseline

    peer to peer prose editing

  363. Six Great Deals Books

    read these books

  364. Public Domain Chronicle

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

  365. Help Wanted

    kinds of help I could use

  366. Transparent Contract Components

    sharper tools, finer toolmarks

  367. MPL-2.0 versus OPL-2.1

    a redline (diff) showing changes

  368. Lexical Scope for Contracts

    wandering ever closer to LISP

  369. I Have Another Blog

    you may want to subscribe on License Zero, too

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

    a redline (diff) showing changes

  371. CLAs are Not a Sham

    licensing with friends, improved and improving

  372. The Well Appointed Skinner Box

    farewell, Medium

  373. Contract Components

    fine-grained means of abstraction in legal drafting

  374. Debian Free Software Guidelines versus the Open Source Definition

    a redline (diff) showing changes

  375. Mercenary Rapport

    moral blindness in open source as social media

  376. Unsustainability at Scale

    today’s tools for yesterday’s problems tomorrow

  377. Feed this Bear

    indie coder, promote thyself!

  378. Overkill

    doing IP law wrong, and getting away with it

  379. The License Zero Manifesto

    sustainable software in the open

  380. Prescription Contracts

    thinking about direct lawyer guidance on rxnda.com

  381. Null Value

    against demise of the hacker public license

  382. Nobody’s Clients

  383. RxNDA.com

    breaking the NDA logjam

  384. Seven Takeaways from the SEC DAO Report

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

  385. Switchmode Developer Agreement

    an open form contract for open source contractors

  386. Open Software Service Terms

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

  387. It’s Not About Community

    another view of Open Source

  388. Open Source: Theory of Operation

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

  389. Debian 8.7 on Dell Optiplex 7010

  390. Open Source License Business Perception Report

    the pain and confusion of common open licenses, roughly quantified

  391. Against Legislating the Nonobvious

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

  392. The Mendicant Maintainerati

    no holy fools for Open Source

  393. The MIT License, Line by Line

    171 words every programmer should understand

  394. The Earl of Ethereum’s Case

    Who keeps a blockchain’s conscience?

  395. Deal Mechanic

    The writing on the door.

  396. Emancipation by Reference

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

  397. Node.js Streams

    fundamental abstractions reviewed and revisited

  398. IP Field Guide

    publicly licensed, publicly available intro for non-lawyers

  399. The JavaScript Joke Was on Me

    or, a few things learned the hard way

  400. Circulation Policy

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

  401. Annotations in Context

    A first attempt at useful, responsible Common Form annotations

  402. 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.

  403. License from Who?

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

  404. The Triplebyte Plan

    The tangled web of one start-up equity plan

  405. The Berneout Pledge

    Sucks less than CLAs!

  406. First Read: The Fair Source License

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

  407. I’ll Never Be a Super Lawyer

    In feigned ignorance there is no grace.

  408. Startup Unix

    An open legal operating system for start-up technology companies

  409. What Enumeration Means

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

  410. Template Ambiguity

    Document assembly can make ambiguity even harder to spot.

  411. The Blanks Problem

    A tough Common Form design decision explained.

  412. Term Injection

    Fighting insertion of unexpected terms in automated form contracts

  413. React Patent Redline

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

  414. Certificated Assent

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

  415. Hacking Common Form

    Overview of existing Common Form software for programmers

  416. Terms of Service; Already Read

    Verifiable contracts should help consumers, too.

  417. Reproduction of Hierarchy

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

  418. Index Card Contracts

    Common Form for paper people

  419. Grab-Bag Contracts

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

  420. Named Provisions

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

  421. vesting.js

    From code to law and back again

  422. Blind Patches

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

  423. Modularity is not the Law

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

  424. The Halliburton Hypothesis

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

  425. Value Statement

    as found at the feet of my bills

  426. FTC 2014 Year in Review

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

  427. Common Form

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

  428. 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

  429. 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.