Bradley Kuhn is not a lawyer, but he works at the Software Freedom Law Center and heads the Software Freedom Conservancy. He is fun to watch and listen to because he walks the tightrope between creative, carefree developers and cautious, legally-minded lawyers.

Bradley Kuhn is one of the founding team members of the Software Freedom Law Center, and a longtime advocate for the cause of Free Software. Many consider him one of the most influential voices in the worldwide FLOSS community. Kuhn, formerly the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, took some time recently to catch us up on his latest work.

2007 has been an exemplary year for software freedom, which makes the keynote speakers selected for Ohio LinuxFest 2007 particularly fitting. The Ohio LinuxFest organizers are proud to announce that Max Spevack and Bradley Kuhn will be keynoting this year.

Matt Asay wants Red Hat to make its Spacewalk project a true community. That’s a noble goal. But what I’ve observed over the last few years is there is a big difference between the noble goals of community and what many businesses want.

In this special episode, we talk to Bradley M. Kuhn of the FSLC & FSC about software freedom, litigation against open source developers, the future and thread of web services that aren’t open, the AGPL and poker.

What is a derivative work of open source software? "The answer is I don't know -- and the fact is most people don't know," Jason Wacha, general counsel for MontaVista Software, said in a recent webinar. "The 'derivative works' definition hasn't been that well defined. There are 12 U.S. circuits, and each has its own definition -- some have none."

We are a little bit disturbed. Not in a "We just watched a David Lynch movie" sort of way, but still, it is a little unnerving to think that our last post on Ulteo hinted at a world domination plot... and now it seems that goal is within their reach.

Some quarters in the software industry still carry a bias against the credibility of open source security applications. Open source network gateway developer Untangle did not expect to find its request for certified testing of the popular open source virus security product ClamAV shunned. When it was, Untangle decided to do its own test.

Linden Lab, the creator of online virtual community Second Life, released its viewer earlier this year with a GPL 2.0 license, adding a clause called the "FLOSS exception," which releases developers using certain open source licenses from the requirement that any derivative works be licensed under the GPL.