Andrew Katz, Moorcrofts CEO and Head of Technology has been confirmed as a keynote speaker at OpenSym 2019, taking place on 20-22 August 2019 in Skövde, Sweden.

What is OpenSym 2019?

OpenSym 2019, the 15th International Symposium on Open Collaboration (OpenSym, formerly WikiSym) is an annual conference series dedicated to open collaboration research and practice.
Open collaboration is:

• egalitarian (everyone can join, no principled or artificial barriers to participation exist),
• meritocratic (decisions and status are merit-based rather than imposed) and self-organizing (processes adapt to people rather than people adapt to pre-defined processes).

Prime places to find open collaboration are wikis, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects, open source projects, open data and open government initiatives, open educational resources.

OpenSym has a steering committee and advisory board that helps direct the OpenSym annual conferences.

Andrew’s OpenSym 2019 Keynote

Andrew’s keynote is entitled: “Designing a licence for open collaboration: insights from development and use of the CERN Open Hardware Licence”.

Other keynote speakers, include Bruce Perens, one of the founders of the Open Source movement in software, and the person to announce “Open Source” to the world.

About Andrew Katz

Andrew Katz is a British and Irish lawyer and CEO of Moorcrofts LLP, a boutique corporate and technology law firm in Thames Valley, where he heads the technology department.

Prior to his legal career, Andrew Katz was a software developer and has released software under the GPL. At Moorcrofts, he advises individuals, corporations, foundations and public sector organisations on the law concerning free and open source software and is increasingly becoming involved with open hardware and open content. He is a visiting researcher at the University of Skövde, Sweden and a founder editor of the Free and Open Source Software Law Review. He has drafted the Solderpad Open Hardware licence, and he also sits on the core drafting team of the CERN Open Hardware Licence.

More information

For further details about Open Hardware licences, please contact Andrew Katz.

For further details about the event, please visit the OpenSym website.