conferences | speakers | series

Embedded Linux License Compliance for Hackers & Makers

home

Embedded Linux License Compliance for Hackers & Makers
FOSDEM 2021

This presentation will cover the practices and tools you can use to improve compliance with open source licenses as a hobbyist or small business using OpenEmbedded/Yocto Project, Buildroot or other Embedded Linux build systems. The focus will be on practical steps that don't require excessive time, effort or consultation with expensive lawyers. This presentation will also discuss license compliance pitfalls to avoid. No legal advice will be given in this talk.

Many presentations and articles about open source license compliance focus on the needs of large corporate users of open source and aren't well suited to individual hackers/makers or small businesses. However, even if you don't have the public profile and deep pockets of a large organisation you should be thinking about how you can empower users of your software or physical product to take advantage of their rights around open source software. Rather that trying to develop a comprehensive enterprise-grade open source policy what you need is some steps to get started, some rules of thumb and some tools which are relatively straightforward to use. License compliance is a process and even if you don't feel you have the resources to achieve perfect compliance it's important to take the steps that are within your reach.

Speakers: Paul Barker