Karen Sandler

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7 Notable Legal Developments in Open Source in 2016

In 2012 the jury in the first Oracle v. Google trial found that Google's inclusion of Java core library APIs in Android infringed Oracle's copyright. The district court overturned the verdict, holding that the APIs as such were not copyrightable (either as individual method declarations or their "structure, sequence and organization" [SSO]). The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, applying 9th Circuit law, reversed, holding that the "declaring code and the [SSO] of the 37 Java API packages are entitled to copyright protection." The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case, and in 2016 a closely watched second trial was held on Google's defense of fair use. In May 2016 the jury returned a unanimous verdict in favor of Google...

Free Software Foundation to offer seminar on GPL enforcement and legal ethics

Richard Fontana | opensource.com | March 12, 2014

The Free Software Foundation will be providing a half-day legal seminar titled "GPL Enforcement and Legal Ethics", taking place on Monday, March 24 at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. Read More »

Karen Sandler Addresses Open Source's "Identity Crisis"

For Karen Sandler, software freedom isn't simply a technical matter. Nor is it a purely ideological one. It's a matter of life and death. Sandler, Executive Director of the non-profit Software Freedom Conservancy, says software freedom became personal when she realized her pacemaker/defibrillator was running code she couldn't analyze. For nearly a decade—first at the Software Feedom Law Center, then at the GNOME Foundation before Conservancy—she's been an advocate for the right to examine the software on which our lives depend...

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LibreHealth

LibreHealth is an independent self-governing free & open source software community founded by leading members of the OpenMRS & OpenEMR projects. It builds on a decade of dedication and hard work by contributors to those earlier projects and was created to expand the communities’ impact to all types of Health IT, leveraging its values of active user engagement & radically open transparency. Participation in the LibreHealth community is open to all individuals who support our core values and contribute to our activities.

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Madeleine Ball: An Inspiration In Open Medicine And Free Software

Asheesh Laroia | OpenHatch.org | October 16, 2012

Madeleine Ball is an inspiration to anyone who thinks individuals should control the software and medical information that define our lives. I’m happy to honor her for this year’s Ada Lovelace Day, when we share the stories of women in science, technology, engineering, and math that inspire us. Read More »

On the Importance of Patient Empowerment and Open Source: A Medicine X panel Weighs In

Jennifer Huber | Stanford Medicine News | September 16, 2016

It’s your body, so you should have access to all of your medical data, right? This morning at the Medicine X session on data and devices, I learned that liberating your own medical data — or devices — will probably not be so simple. The conversation was started by Ben West, a software engineer and co-founder of the Nightscout Project, which supports the creation of open-source technology for people with Type 1 diabetes...

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Open Source Initiative Names Stefano Maffulli As First Executive Director

Press Release | Open Source Initiative (OSI) | September 8, 2021

The Open Source Initiative ® (OSI), stewards of the Open Source Definition that sets the foundation for the open source ecosystem, is excited to announce Stefano Maffulli as its first Executive Director.  The appointment is a key step for the transformation of OSI into a professionally managed organization, a process that the Board of Directors started in 2020. After an expansive search led by OSI’s purpose-built staffing committee, the Board of Directors appointed Maffulli, an experienced international leader in enterprise and open source environments.

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OpenMRS & OpenEMR Community Members Join Forces - Announce LibreHealth

Press Release | LibreHealth | November 10, 2016

Senior contributors and leaders from OpenMRS & OpenEMR, the two leading open source Health IT platforms, have announced the formation of LibreHealth, a new initiative to expand on many years of work by those communities’ volunteers through increased focused on needs of its users in critical areas. After many years of growth under the sponsorship of organizations OEMR & OpenMRS Inc., key members of the two communities have joined forces to launch a successor free & open source software community to fulfill their vision of improved health outcomes around the world.

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Opensource.com Publishes 18 Interviews with Speakers of the Upcoming OSCON Conference

For those of you who have not noticed yet, the folks at Opensource.com just completed the publication of an entire series of interviews with speakers at the upcoming O/Reilly OSCON conference. This conference is one of the most important and interesting open source conferences of the year and the wide variety of interviews conducted which show the depth and breadth of the conference topics. `

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Pursuing Adoption of Free and Open Source Software in Governments

Free and open source software creates a natural — and even necessary — fit with government. I joined a panel this past weekend at the Free Software Foundation conference LibrePlanet on this topic and have covered it previously in a journal article and talk. Our panel focused on barriers to its adoption and steps that free software advocates could take to reach out to government agencies. Read More »

Top 10 FOSS Legal Stories in 2016

The year 2016 resulted in several important developments that affect the FOSS ecosystem. While they are not strictly "legal developments" they are important for the community. For one, Eben Moglen, the general counsel of the Free Software Foundation, stepped down. Eben has been a leader on FOSS legal issues since the late 1990s and has been critical to the success of the FOSS movement. The FOSS community owes him a huge debt of gratitude, and I expect that he will continue to be active in the FOSS community. The success of FOSS adoption was dramatically illustrated when Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation and summarized in the article, Open Source Won. So, Now What? in Wired magazine...

“I Want to Know What Code Is Running Inside My Body”

K McGowan | Backchannel | February 11, 2016

At age 33, Marie Moe learned that her heart might fail her at any moment. A computer security expert in Norway, she found out she has a fairly common heart condition that disrupts her normal pulse, so she had to get a pacemaker. The surgery was quick and uncomplicated. Just a few weeks later she was able to travel to London for a course on ethical hacking...

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