Brussels / 31 January & 1 February 2015

schedule

Identity Crisis: Are we who we say we are?


Karen Sandler, Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, will discuss the peculiar tension in the intersection of free and open source software and corporate interest. Working in free software often triggers a complicated set of allegiances. When tricky situations arise how do developers decide what their priorities are? As a community how do you know whether a contributor is advocated the best for the project of the best for their employer? How much can governance help? And at the end of the day, how do the ideological components to these projects really play out? And how should they?

This is a very confusing area in free and open source software communities. I will use specific examples from a few different free software communities to illustrate the current state of ambiguity. This presentation will shed light on the situation and propose proactive solutions.

Speakers

Photo of Karen Sandler Karen Sandler