The Software Freedom Law Centre has opened its doors to
provide free legal help to open source software
developers.
The centre is backed by the Open Source Development Labs, which has
raised more than £2m for a fund that will provide the seed money
for the centre, which is based in New York.
Last year the OSDL announced it had set up a separate £5.3m Linux
legal defence fund for Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux
kernel, and user companies that faced Linux-related legal action by
SCO Group.
The centre will initially employ two full-time lawyers and will be
run by Eben Moglen, a copyright law professor at Columbia
University.
Moglen said the centre's prime aim was to avoid litigation
occurring and to offer advice to developers on how to stay out of
courtrooms by avoiding the use of patented intellectual property
connected to proprietary software when developing their products.