Free software and competition law
Since the start of the free software movement, the legal focus of developer communities have mostly been around intellectual property regimes such as patent and copyright. Antitrust and competition law have been mostly seen trough the lens of monopoly/duopoly for operating system on consumer hardware, with free software presented as a solution. However, with the rise of sovereignty discourse in Europe, the creation of state funded projects such as La Suite and the increasing commercial success of the open source industry, the question of the interplay of competition law and free software start to be more relevant. This talk will present the basics of competition law in the EU and US, the various stories and debates on free software and competition law, and why it matter for communities, institutional and commercial actors.
Sysadmin, working at Red Hat in the Open Source AI Program Office
