Bringing together marketplace competitors to work on open source projects can yield incredible innovation, but doing so can also result in violations of antitrust laws. This week the Linux Foundation Training & Certification is launching a new, free online course titled Antitrust Laws for Open Source Software Project Management and Participation (LFC105) to provide a basic understanding of what antitrust and competition laws are all about and how they apply to open source development.
Open source projects are exciting because they do the seemingly impossible: bring marketplace competitors together to collaborate for the greater good. This arrangement has yielded impressive results, and much of the technological progress we’ve seen in the last twenty years can be credited to open source projects and their communities. However, there are pitfalls that must be carefully considered and avoided when we convene multiple entities to work together. The violation of laws related to antitrust and competition can happen inadvertently if all parties are not informed and on the lookout for potential infractions.
To avoid violating these laws and incurring serious penalties for both individuals and their employers, everyone who is working with open source projects should have a basic understanding of antitrust laws. This course is intended for anyone participating in open source projects at any level – contributors, maintainers, Steering Committee members and Governing Board members, and
This online, self-paced course is free and open to everyone on your team. It will take approximately an hour to complete. While you won’t come away as a legal expert, you will be prepared to be a legally responsible participant in open source project activities of any type.
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
- Identify what types of actions may violate antitrust and competition laws
- Discuss what types of actions you should take to stay inside the legal guardrails
- Understand when to ask for further advice
The course author for Antitrust Laws for Open Source Software Project Management and Participation (LFC105) is Andrew Updegrove, a co-founder and partner of the Boston law firm of Gesmer Updegrove LLP and the outside legal counsel to The Linux Foundation. Since 1988 he has worked with over 200 open source foundations and standards consortia, most of which he helped form. He has testified before the United States Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission and Congressional and state committees regarding open collaboration matters, and filed pro bono “friend of the court” briefs with the Federal Circuit Court, Supreme Court, and Federal Trade Commission on leading standards litigation. He has served as a member of the Boards of Directors of ANSI, the Free Standards Group, the Linux Foundation, and WorkCred; on the Advisory Boards of HL7 and Open Source for America; and as a Charter Fellow of OpenForum Europe, a think tank advising the EU and member states on open technology policy matters. He is a graduate of Yale University and the Cornell University Law School.
