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# System prepended metadata

title: 'Roman: Legal affairs'

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# Roman: Legal affairs

* Intro
* Are you a lawyer? No? Then why do you get to do this work?
* What kinds of issues come to your attention?
* More generally, why is the law, licensing, and so on, so critical to the success of free software? Can't we all just get along? Isn't it sufficient to slap a license on it?




Intro
* Why does ASF need to have a lawyer to begin with? Who will ever sue us?
* Are you a lawyer? No? Then why do you get to do this work?
* Who else is involved in shepherding legal matters at the ASF?
* What kinds of issues come to your attention?
* More generally, why is the law, licensing, and so on, so critical to the success of free software? Can’t we all just get along? Isn’t it sufficient to slap a license on it?
* Do developers really have to care about law and licenses?
* It is pretty clear that ASF legal committee is valuable to the Foundation itself, is it also helping our downstream consumers?
* Favorite open source bikeshedding question: ICLA, CCLA or DCO?
* Partying thoughts?

