Every participant in the FOSS ecosystem relies on understanding how projects are licensed in order to meet their compliance obligations. Developers who build on FOSS must ensure they are confident about the licenses of the projects they've built on just as much as FOSS projects releasing their own software must ensure they feel confident the code they're releasing is compliant. Lack of clarity or confidence in FOSS projects' licensing builds on itself and makes it difficult for everyone to participate. ClearlyDefined, a tool intended to clarify license data across FOSS, is working to help this.
Let's talk more about the challenges developers, projects, and organizations all face when licensing isn't clear for FOSS projects. We'll discuss particular examples of where lack of clarity was confusing or disruptive to the development process. Finally, let's talk about simple ways to address these problems and make sure everyone can work openly in the community using, contributing to, and releasing FOSS.
No prior understanding of FOSS licensing issues is required.