Bradley Kuhn

Software Freedom Conservancy  (SFC) recently complete the most significant trial in copyleft enforcement history. In Orange County, California, USA, SFC sued Vizio — a manufacturer of ARM-based televisions — for long-standing violations of the GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1. 

This talk will explain what's going on with the case (and, possibly, what happened at trial, as it may have occurred in full by the time of SCALE 2026!), why it is significant to every Linux user and every consumer who buys electronic devices, and what is next for copyleft.

Have ever wondered how FOSS was actually was supposed stay FOSS for the long term? Have you ever been unsure or confused why — in a world where Linux is on nearly every device — most people cannot actually run an alternative OS build on their device? This talk will leave you informed on these questions and prepared to participate in the next policy steps our community must take to bring back software freedom and rights to the next generation of FOSS users, activists and developers.

After thirty years of FOSS advocacy, issue and problems in approach have begun to emerge. Strategic mistakes in response to new technologies has often led to large areas of software endeavor to remain proprietary. While for-profit companies have been rewarded with great efficiency benefits and other perks from their adoption of FOSS, rarely do these benefits trickle down to consumers and end-users in their daily computing lives. This talk examines our past mistakes in advocacy and activism, and considers what to do next.

The movement for free exchange of software stemmed initially as a backlash against restrictive licensing regimes. As a response, communities formed their own licensing rules that used that restrictive system of control as a mechanism to liberate us. Thirty years later, this licensing system of open sharing, which is the bedrock of FLOSS, shows cracks, particularly with the advent of for-profit companies participating heavily. This talk explores the myriad of issues in the licensing structure for FLOSS, and considers what community-oriented actions are needed to address these problems.

Whether you’re writing something low-level or an application, and whether it’s embedded or in the Cloud, if you use a Linux-based system to do your work, you *will* interact with FOSS (Free and Open Source) licensing. After completing this tutorial, students will leave with a foundation of understanding that will help them navigate future questions and issues about FOSS licensing they will encounter on Linux.

Most embedded computing products run Linux. However, obtaining the complete, corresponding source code (CCS), which Linux's license (GPL) requires, can prove difficult. Linux's main sources are available upstream, but modified versions in products often contain incomplete source that doesn't build. Providing instructions to build & install is required by GPL to assure users' software freedom. Come learn about how to avoid this mistake by seeing a real-world example of how to do it right.

Recently, the process of FOSS license creation has been politicized from all directions, primarily by for-profit companies. We now see companies and their lawyers promulgating seemingly-FOSS but non-commercial-use only licenses. Even worse, some companies seek to redefine copyleft into a toxic system that is inoculated only by a separate proprietary license. Activists have meanwhile created well-meaning licenses that use denial of software freedom to advance important causes, but are ultimately non-FOSS. This talk discusses what we should do next about this complex confluence of events.

FLOSS “sustainability” has garnered much attention. Explosive growth yielded new interest in FLOSS, but concerns about critical bugs jarred newcomers. Unlike in earlier eras, we observe a complex cultural, financial, & leadership melding of for-profit mentality with traditional, radical values of software liberation. Delineating the ideologies and identifying corporate manipulation became difficult. In the midst of success, Open Source now exhibits major flaws. Fortunately, historical strategies that sustained our communities are poised for resurgence. This talk explores these issues.