I am a lawyer and community-builder, and currently the co-founder and general counsel of Tidelift.

In previous lives, I've been:

  • Deputy General Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation;
  • a board member of the Open Source Initiative, and chair of the licensing committee;
  • an associate at Greenberg Traurig, working for a variety of clients on technology transactions and licensing issues;
  • an attorney at Mozilla, where I led the revision of the Mozilla Public License, version 2.0;
  • maintainer of a GPL'd operating system for Lego Mindstorms robots;
  • QA and management with GNOME, Ximian, and Novell;
  • a member of the GNOME board of directors.

Authored Content

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4 questions for the OSI board of directors candidates

The Open Source Initiative's new board will have several old and new issues to address.
Luis Villa 11 Mar 2021
An open for business sign.

6 questions for the OSI board of directors candidates

This election season, what direction do you want to see the Open Source Initiative go?
Luis Villa 01 Mar 2020
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What to know before jumping into a career as an open source lawyer

Find out what it takes to become an open source lawyer.
Luis Villa 07 Feb 2017 3 comments
Legal scales in open source

Exploring the legal issues around open data and open hardware

Drafting and using open licenses for data and hardware presents both familiar old challenges (like...
Luis Villa 19 May 2014 2 comments
copyright troll hiding under a bridge illustration

Younger developers reject licensing, risk chance for reform

Modern copyright law grants copyright automatically to any creative work, including simple things...
Luis Villa 12 Feb 2013 10 comments
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Authored Comments

Commented on 9 Feb 2017
What to know before jumping into a career as an open source lawyer
It is probably worth noting that many of the top tech trans lawyers now have some experience here - they either know some of the basics, or know where to find experts. (In particular, FSF-Europe's Legal Network is an...
Commented on 1 Apr 2010
A community of FOSS lawyers?
<i>(they are worse at anything but their legal profession).</i> hehehe... so true. I bet a bunch of us sitting down around a table could easily specify a simple word processor that would be web-based (hence easy...
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