FOSS Backstage 2024

Open Source Contributions in Today’s World
03-04, 14:00–14:30 (Europe/Berlin), Stage Wintergarten

Are you contributing to an OSS project? And do you know how to distribute software in today’s diverse ecosystem? What publishing software legally implies when it comes to containers and AI code? If you want to learn about insights from a technical AND a legal point of view, this talk is for you!


We will start by outlining the drawing up the legal and technical framework between copyright and, patent law, new EU regulations (Cyber Resilience Act and Product Liability Directive) and different FOSS licenses.We will explain, explaining some crucial terms and the change of their meaning in the past few years (such as distribution).

Against this background, we will share, from a technical position, suggestions on FOSS compliance in real-world scenarios examples, such as publishing artifacts on package managers, repositories, docker and in the cloud.

From a technical point of view we show real-world scenarios,
e.g. publishing code and the according legal documentation under different OSS licenses and making build artifacts publicly available on package managers, Docker and the cloud in a FOSS-compliant manner.

Using these examples, we will show from a lawyer’s angle how the legal requirements need to be reflected in the composition of software applications and what the practical consequences are for contributors in the modern FOSS world. We will, in particular, give some hints on how to deal with (a lack of) license compatibility in the cloud, specific license obligations and other requirements that might result from working with Open Source Software.

To round things up, Lina will share an update on new obligations for FOSS distributors resulting from the Cyber Resilience Act, the Product Liability Directive and AI.

Dr Lina Boecker is a well experienced lawyer for information technology (IT) law and one of the few experts in the field of open-source-software (OSS) compliance. She advises a broad range of clients from software developers to international OEMs and public research institutions on all aspects of IT-law.

Lina was admitted to the bar in 2011. After having spent nine years (thereof more than five years as a partner) at a Berlin based boutique law firm for IT law, she joined Osborne Clarke as a partner in 2022.

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Angelika Wittek is a self-employed software engineer and architect. She currently works as a product manager for the openMDM(R)Eclipse Working Group. She supports the Catena-X Automotive Network as an open source governance consultant for the Eclipse Foundation. She is active in the Eclipse community and is a member of the EclipseCon program committee. Angelika holds a degree in computer sciencefrom the University of Würzburg, Germany.