• Events

• LocalGroups

• Activities

• Teams

• KnowHow

• RecentChanges

Legal and Licensing Workshop Jury

About us

The Jury is the group that assists in the planning of the FSFE’s annual Free Software Legal and Licensing Workshop (the LLW), held every year to allow legal experts to discuss issues and best practices related to Free Software licences. The LLW has become known to its participants as the world’s foremost gathering of lawyers, technologists, and thought leaders on Free Software legal and licensing topics.

Participation in the Free Software Legal and Licensing Workshop provides legal professionals not only the opportunity to share knowledge and updates on the topics they are working on, but also a chance to meet and get acquainted with each other. These two aspects, combined, foster better licence compliance by spreading best practices.

The Jury’s main role is to assist in setting the agenda of the LLW. To this end, the Jury works closely with the LLW Programme Committee, a smaller working group that selects and organizes the accepted talks for the LLW Agenda.

The Jury consists of a maximum of 15 members. Membership is open to current and past members of the Legal Network's Council, as well as members of the FSFE's license questions team.

How the Jury Assists to Set the LLW Agenda

• The Jury first convenes among itself to select a central theme for the LLW (in 2019 done by the Legal Network Council). This theme will then be used to invite members of the Legal Network in a Call for Papers to contribute topics for the various sessions of the LLW.
• Upon receiving all such proposed topics, the Jury shall evaluate each individual topic on its merits and its relevance to the central theme.
• During the Jury calls, the Jury can also decide on which submissions to accept and reject as well.
• The Jury will also evaluate the content of the submissions: for instance, whether the content needs to be limited or expanded, guided in another direction, or merged with another submission.
• For Panel Discussions, the Jury should also keep in mind whether the speakers represent enough diversity of opinion to make the discussion worthwhile.
• The ranking by the Jury will then used by the LLW Programme Committee to work on the agenda
• The LLW Programme Committee shall then convene in a personal meeting to draft the agenda based on the evaluation of the Jury.
• There will be a feedback about the agenda from the LLW Programme Committee with the LLW Jury.
• The LLW Programme Chair and the FSFE's President need to agree on the final agenda. Any concerns shall however be first discussed with the LLW Jury.
• Final decisions to recommendations made by the LLW Jury shall be made by the LLW Programme Chair, and executed by the LLW Programme Committee; specifically, whether, and where in the agenda, to add an accepted topic to the LLW Agenda.

How Submissions are Reviewed

The Jury aims to work with as much transparency as possible with the Legal Network, in order to ensure a smooth Call for Papers process, and to provide fair, knowledgeable, and efficient evaluation of the submitted topics for appropriate inclusion in the LLW Agenda.

To this end:

• All proposals that are properly submitted to the appropriate LLW page in the conference planning tool will be read.
• The Jury will review each submission in the conference planning tool.
• Individual members of the Jury shall recuse themselves from reviewing or evaluating their own submissions if they submit a proposal themselves, or the submissions of a family member, spouse, co-worker, competitor, or any other person with whom they have a relationship where a conflict of interest issue may arise.
• The Jury’s consideration shall be primarily focused on ensuring that the proposed topic is relevant to the Conference and in the best interest of the participants and the further enhancement of Free Software.
• Members of the Jury are asked to provide a ranking for each submission on a numerical scale.
• Members of the Jury are also asked to provide qualitative information on what they liked about, and what they believe could improve, each submission. This written feedback will be crucial in making decisions when members of the Jury disagree in their overall assessment of a particular submission.
• Members of the Jury shall treat all submission materials confidential.

Category/Teams