The first version of the Fiduciary License Agreement was published by the FSFE in 2007 in order to offer something that was missing at that time — a well balanced copyright assignment for the FS community.
Since then different FS projects have made use of it. Some to assign copyright to FSFE and others to assign it to different entities in order to take care of paperwork and copyright issues for the FS project.
In this presentation we will look at the lessons learnt in the diverse history of the FLA and look ahead what is in line for the next version of the FLA.
The Fiduciary License Agreement [FLA] is a very well balanced copyright assignment that is beneficial for both organisations that foster FS project and the contributors.
Its main goals are to:
- make sure the project stays Free Software;
- make license maintenance easier for the Fiduciary (the entity);
- retain as much freedom and power to the Beneficiaries (the contributors) over their own code as possible not to make the software non-Free.
After a short introduction, we will look at how FSFE and other entities — from dedicated FS organisations to businesses and individuals — have made use of the FLA and which lessons were learnt in those 6 years.
At the end of this session we will peek into the future of the FLA and discuss improvements aimed at the next revision.