Neil Brown
@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk  ·  activity timestamp 5 hours ago

New #blog post: "FOSS projects, free lawyers, and reality"

This has been playing on my mind for a few days now.

I wish I had a better solution, but I don't: for FOSS projects, with no legal budget, finding suitably expert, experienced legal advice is a challenge.

https://neilzone.co.uk/2025/06/foss-projects-free-lawyers-and-reality/

#FOSS#FreeSoftware #lawfedi
Bill Ricker
@BRicker@fosstodon.org  ·  activity timestamp 4 hours ago
@neil
My state, Massachusetts, has a formal referral service to connect creatives with Pro Bono counsel, Mass Lawyers for the Arts.
Their referral helped us reactivate a museum's charitable status (prior Secretary & Treasurer had neglected mandatory and optional-but-not-really annual filings).
Some FLOSS Creators might qualify as edge cases as we did, at least for some issues. (eg. Copyright ©️ is intrinsically creative! )
Neil Brown
@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk  ·  activity timestamp 5 hours ago

On a related topic, there are far fewer lawyers in my fedi feed than there were 12-24 months ago.

For whatever reason or reasons (and I'm not really asking/enquiring), it seems that many of them came here from Twitter, and then moved quite rapidly to other social media platforms.

The #lawfedi hashtag used to be quite popular; now, it has dried up.