Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2012/12/03/fosdem-legal-policy.html

Richard Fontana, Tom Marble, Karen Sandler, and I will reprise our
roles as co-coordinators of
the Legal and
Policy Issues DevRoom for FOSDEM
2013.
The CFP
for the FOSDEM 2013 Legal & Policy Issues DevRoom is now
available, and the deadline for submission is 21 December
2012, about 18 days from now.

I want to put a very specific call out to a group of people who may not
have considered submitting a talk to a track like this before. In
particular, if you are a Free Software developer who has ideas about the
policy/licensing decisions for your project, then you should consider
submitting a proposal.

The problem we have is that we often hear from lawyers, or licensing
pundits like me on these types of tracks. We all have a lot to say
about issue of policy or licensing. But, it’s the developers who lead
these projects who know best what policy issues you face, and what is
needed to address those issues.

I also want to add something my graduate adviser once said to me: At
the Master’s level, it’s sufficient for your thesis just to ask an
important and complex question well. Only a PhD-level thesis has to
propose answers to such questions. In my view, our track is at
the Master’s level: talks that ask complex licensing policy questions
well, but don’t necessarily have all the answers are just the kind of
proposals we’re seeking.

Please share this CFP widely. We’ve got a two-day dev room so there
are plenty of slots, and while we can’t guarantee acceptance of any
specific talk, your job as submitters is to make the job of the
co-chairs difficult by having to choose between many excellent talks.
We look forward to your submissions!