Deb Nicholson is a free software policy expert and a passionate community advocate. She is the Director of Community Operations at Software Freedom Conservancy where she supports the work of its member organizations and facilitates collaboration with the wider free software community. Formerly, she has served as the Community Outreach Director for the Open Invention Network, a shared defensive patent pool on a mission to protect free and open source software and the Membership Coordinator for the Free Software Foundation. She’s won the O’Reilly Open Source Award for her work with GNU MediaGoblin, a federated media-hosting service and OpenHatch, free software's welcoming committee. She is also a founding organizer of the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference, an annual event dedicated to surfacing new voices and welcoming new people to the free software community. She lives with her husband and her lucky black cat in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Presentations

13x

Software Patent Litigation: What Have We Learned?

The huge increase in software patent litigation over the last 15 years has produced reams of articles, cost fortunes and even snagged the US President's attention. But when something goes on for long enough, it also produces data -- lots and lots of data. So what have we learned from all the data?

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14x

Use More Free Software at Work: How to Approach the Legal Department

Many companies, schools or projects could benefit tremendously from using free software, but free software enthusiasts and institutional gatekeepers are coming from very different perspectives. Developers tend to be most familiar with FOSS's benefits; reusing code, public code review for bugs, increased project capacity and of course, cost. The legal department has it's own mandate and is often most familiar with the risks, some real and some perceived.

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14x

The FOSS Awakens

The free software movement has always been the Rebel Alliance. (Duh!) But who is the enemy? Many of you think it's Darth Gates, but sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. Strangling people who make mistakes, insisting on homogeneity or just being mean to our own people is the dark side. We'll take a look at all the mistakes the First Order makes and hopefully, we'll resolve not to emulate them in our communities this year.

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16x

Equifax: the Canary in the Git Mine

It's easy to criticize Equifax, but what does your open source process look like? Beyond a single vulnerability or product, what is the proper process to mitigate risk for open source software and still drive innovation? What role do vendors play? The technologists of today should learn a collaborative approach to open source usage and development at work.

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