Moorcrofts Joint Managing Partner and Head of Tech, Andrew Katz, took part in the European Open Source & Free Software Law Event’s (EOLE) second webinar, on the topic of public sector collaborations around FOSS projects.

About the Public sector collaborations around FOSS projects webinar

The webinar, which took place on 16 December 2020 looked at legal, governance and practical issues surrounding improving the use and release of open source software by public administrations. Legal issues in this area are no longer focused on licensing or even compliance (still important issues) but how to set up legal structures and frameworks to reinforce cooperation and sustainability of public sector open source projects – or explore the option to not have any formal framework and focus on grass level interactions to strengthen the community.

Speakers

The webinar was facilitated by Malcolm Bain, partner at Across Legal (Spain), whilst Andrew Katz and Finn Lewis of Agile Collective discussed the topic of building municipal open source governance structure from bottom up.

Other speakers and topics included:

• Pr. Barbara Gagliardi – University of Turin: “Cooperation between public entities as a tool for the performance of public service available also in the ITC sector, according to EU directives on public contracts”.
• Marc Pérez-Batlle – Barcelona City Council: “Agile strategies for implementing more and better open source in public administration. Challenges and some suggested good practices”.

About Andrew Katz

Andrew is one of the UK’s leading free and open-source lawyers, is a Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe and the Open Forum Academy, and is a visiting researcher at the University of Skövde, Sweden. Prior to qualifying as a lawyer, Andrew was a software developer (he is a certified NeXT developer).

He is also a founder of Orcro, a division of Moorcrofts specialising in compliance issues with particular focus on GDPR and OpenChain compliance. Moorcrofts has been appointed by the Linux Foundation as an OpenChain partner, and Andrew has guided organisations large and small through the OpenChain compliance process.

Andrew’s skillsets also cover open source licensing, technology law and Intellectual Property.

About EOLE

International annual conference cycle, the European Open Source & Free Software Law Event (EOLE) aims to promote the share and dissemination of legal knowledge related to free software, as well as the development and promotion of good practices. Initiative born in 2008 from practitioners’ needs, EOLE purpose is to develop a legal doctrine dedicated to the dissemination of neutral and qualitative information.

This year and due to the pandemic, the one-day conference will be divided into five webinars focusing on the legal aspects on free software in public administrations, taking place from November 2020 to March 2021.

More Information

Visit the Inno3 website to access the webinar recording.