Don't send an engineer to do a lawyer's job
Channel: Simon Phipps
Date: 2017-02-07

A thread on an Apache mailing list (now safely in the past) provides a great illustration of what not to do when your employer's interests seem to need engagement in an open source community. Instead of asking a suitably-trained lawyer to directly engage, the company asked an engineer to engage when they wanted special terms for a contribution. They went on to propose custom terms, a custom CLA and even implied that they wanted private bilateral negotiations. This session runs through the thread and draws seven lessons for approaching an open source community with your legal issue.

I gave this talk at FOSDEM 2017 in Brussels. Original licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Belgium Licence. See https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/dont_send_an_engineer/ for full details.