Software Ethics and Copyleft Licensing
By Karen Sandler

If we agree that software freedom is an ethical movement, then what are our responsibilities for the ethical issues that licenses don't currently cover? Karen will lead a friendly and constructive discussion to see if we can answer these questions. * What can we learn from or with the ethical licensing movement? * Feasability; Do we think ethical clauses are enforceable? How do we think that these new clauses would affect adoption? * What have we learned about enforceability and adoption of software licenses over the last 30 years? * Should we be designing licenses to support or complement strategies towards making computing more ethical? Karen leads this session with Coraline Ehmke and Don Goodman-Wilson.

Monday 2:50 p.m.–3:50 p.m.

If we agree that software freedom is an ethical movement, then what are our responsibilities for the ethical issues that licenses don't currently cover? Karen will lead a friendly and constructive discussion to see if we can answer these questions. What can we learn from or with the ethical licensing movement? Feasability; Do we think ethical clauses are enforceable? How do we think that these new clauses would affect adoption? What have we learned about enforceability and adoption of software licenses over the last 30 years? Should we be designing licenses to support or complement strategies towards making computing more ethical?

Karen Sandler

Karen M. Sandler is a free software and free culture advocate. Karen is the Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, a charitable nonprofit organized for the support and promotion of free and open source software. Prior to joining Conservancy, she was executive director of the GNOME Foundation. Before that, she was general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. Karen co-organizes Outreachy, the award-winning outreach program for women globally and for people of color who are underrepresented in US tech. . Before joining SFLC, Karen worked as an associate in the corporate departments of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in New York and Clifford Chance in New York and London. Karen is the winner of the 2017 Award for the advancement of software freedom and a recipient of the O’Reilly Open Source Award.

Karen received her law degree from Columbia Law School in 2000, where she was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. Karen received her bachelor’s degree in engineering from The Cooper Union.

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