Embedded Linux License Compliance for Hackers & Makers (FOSDEM 2021)
Channel: Paul Barker
Date: 2021-02-08

This talk was recorded for the virtual FOSDEM 2021 event. At FOSDEM we had a brief live Q&A session. If you're watching the video here on YouTube feel free to ask any questions via the comments.

This presentation covers 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 is on practical steps that don't require excessive time, effort or consultation with expensive lawyers. This presentation also discusses license compliance pitfalls to avoid. No legal advice is 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.

#embeddedlinux #fosdem2021 #opensource

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