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law, technology, and the space between
- Posts
- 478 from 23 Oct 2014 to 17 Sep 2026
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- monthly (10 in the last year)
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- personal blog
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2026 7
2025 11
- LLMs Make Legal Advice Lossy
- PolyForm Noncommercial 2.0.0-pre.2
- PolyForm Noncommercial 2.0.0-pre.1
- Wired on a Surrogacy Gone Wrong
- Plain Nonsense Trumps Jargon
- A Legal Rule That Makes Writing Worse
- Announcing Blackacre Labs
- A Published Legal Form Under Restrictive Copyright License
- The Headlines Are Evil, And They’re Bringing Us Down
- The Fourth Circuit’s Opinion in the Ábrego García Case
- Provisional Guidance for Users of LLM-Based Code Generators
2024 8
2023 31
- Copyleft Intolerance and the Defining-Open Mind Trap
- Unlimited Indemnity for Unpaid Developers?
- Support the Blue Oak License List
- PolyForm Countdown
- Toward PolyForm Shield Version 2
- A Short, Simple Template for Scheduled Relicensing
- Amazon Has a Restricted License, Too
- We Were Wrong About the GPLs
- Understanding “RISC-y Business”
- Recommended Resource: CRS Congressional Court Watcher
- Two Kinds of “Relicensing”
- Overloaded
- Two Kinds of “Dual Licensing”
- Real and Imagined CLA Overreach
- Exactly the Wrong AI Copyrightability Case
- HashiCorp’s New Licensing
- Where is the rule that makes vague license rules legal no-ops?
- No Office Hours
- Utah Social Media Regulation Act
- You Do Not Have a Shoe Size
- On-Cloud Licensing
- NVIDIA Prismer License
- Open Source Unsolved Security
- Wikimedia’s Terms of Use
- European Office Hours
- The Law Does Not Require Legalese
- Sneaking Things In
- Open RAIL-M Is More Unclear Than Scary
- Open Game License Version 1.2 Draft
- Office Hours
- Type Error: “Democratizing”
2022 48
- Delayed Release in Investigative Reporting
- This Rich To Open Source
- MicroHub Sponsorplace
- Open Market for Open Software
- Notice by Hyperlink
- Waypoint NDA 4.0.0
- Putting Software in the Public Domain
- Trademark Undefined Behavior
- Thoughts on Web Footnotes
- Briefless Barristers and Lawyerless Clients
- Time Off Summer ’22
- New Microsoft Word Comments Weirdness
- Legal Sources for Not-a-Lawyers
- Priest Against Priesthood
- The Work, the Tech, and the Crime
- Max Korzh’s “His Home”
- Text Prudent
- Legal Versioning
- From Copy to Reference
- Zelensky Compound NDA
- Copy-and-Paste Goes to Russia
- EULAs Aren’t Inherently Evil
- HTML Scripting Tools
- The Russians Are Coming
- The Open Source Initiative Did Not Win Neo4j v. PureThink
- FOSS Fundraiser for Ukraine?
- Getting the Most From Common Computer Filing Systems
- Russia’s “Fake News” Law
- Switching Open Software Terms
- You And Whose GitHub?
- Russia to Legalize Software Piracy
- What Must Be Said
- Ukraine
- Devs Use Closed Software
- Universal Basic Cop-Out
- Software Pay Data 2020
- Be the Water Boy (or Girl!) for Your Neighborhood
- Big Time Public License 2.0.0
- Second Draft of Waypoint for M&A
- MIT for Noncommercial is Broken
- Fast Path
- Payability, Form, and Substance
- To-Do List Polling
- Pay the Fiddler
- Square One 2e1u
- AWS Contributor Licensing Blurb
- What Do We Call Functional Specs for Legal Forms?
- Waypoint for M&A
2021 72
- Correlation and Causation Symbols
- Single CLA
- Not My Law
- Blue Oak Open Software Licensing Primer
- SaaS Compliance Caveats
- Specifically Regulating Standardized Contracting
- All Heroes, No Casualties
- The Kingsway Basic License
- Hydrant Meter for the Homeless
- Redlining in Microsoft Word 365
- Square One Second Edition
- GPL Had Better be a Contract
- PolyForm Commercial Does Individual Licenses Now
- Pinky Pressing Problem
- Signature Blocks 101
- L. Peter Deutsch and Stig Hackvän
- Time Off Summer ’21
- Upgrading to Debian Bullseye
- Help Fund Water for the Homeless
- Contract by E-Mail
- The Developer Certificate of Origin is Not a Contributor License Agreement
- Standardize Commercial Software Licensing
- License Round-Up
- Waypoint NDA 3.0.0
- In Praise of Cron
- Big Time Public License 1.0.0
- Legal Explainer Sites
- 2020 Oakland Homeless Camp Fires
- Creative Commons’ 2021-2025 Strategy
- The Guestbook NDA
- 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report
- One-Way NDA
- Citation Hustle
- The Luck of Open Source
- Drafter’s Anxiety
- Legal Technology as Regulatory Arbitrage
- Efficient Merit Apocalypse
- Sell Babel 8
- Law Insider’s Contract Teardowns
- Days of Pain
- Open Gaming Deja Vu
- First-Rate Intelligence
- Support Funding for Cali County Law Libraries
- You Can Still Use the Software
- Templating for Lawyers
- Flat Forms
- Zebra G-750 First Look
- Seven Ways to Say “Inequality”
- The Origin of the “MIT License”
- It’s a Trap
- Cross License Foundations
- Open Licensing Attacks on Specific Business Models
- Code Credit License 1.0.0
- Compliance Industrial Pulpit
- Where are the Goalposts?
- The Chalkeaters’ License
- Waypoint Turns Two
- Platform Neutrality
- Reading AGPL
- Square One
- Open Source is Discrimination
- Righteous, Expedient, Wrong
- Water Manifolds
- We Are All Internet Realists Now
- ml5.js Takes a Stand
- Fake Neutrality
- The Tension
- Printing Booklets
- No War on Coronavirus
- Lies My Law School Told Me
- Don’t Pitch Lawyers
- Deprogramming the Programmer
2020 122
- Survive America
- Authority and Expertise
- The Future of the Internet
- The War on License Notices
- Don’t Sign Blank Checks
- Judicial Website, No Money Down
- Water Team on The Oaklandside
- EBMUD for All
- Electric, Light, Organized
- Work Made for Hire … or Not
- Let’s Not All Read Terms of Service
- You Have to Build a Time Machine
- How Congress Sees Open Source
- Signing by E-Mail
- Speedier Git for Text File Tracking
- Doormat 1e
- Turnstile 1e
- DMCASimple 1e
- Copyright Notices Begone
- From Justice With Love
- Communes to Cooperatives
- Public Domain Appendix
- Oracle v. Google Oral Argument
- Mix Many Metaphors
- The Ethical Consequences of Our Collective Activities
- California Welfare and Institutions Code 17000
- Son of Water Boy
- Security Services Terms
- Types of Lawyers
- Amateur Open Econ Toolkit
- Not the Type
- Working in Public
- Connecticut’s Police Bill
- Water Boy
- A Modest Trademark Proposal
- In Praise of Juanito Rus
- Expert Failure
- Colorado’s Police Reform Law
- Programmer Power
- Threat Rhetoric
- Police Qualified Immunity Reading
- No Justice
- PolyForm Defensive is Now PolyForm Shield
- Anything to Everyone
- Acceptable Use
- Narrative Error
- Free & Open Picture Book
- Facing the Choir
- Oakland Police Commission
- Normally Open & Normally Closed
- DMSimple
- The March in Oakland
- Round Robin 1.0.0
- Round Robin License
- Protestant Work Product
- Turnstile
- Progressive Standardization
- PolyForm Noncompete Licenses
- Springboard Agreements
- Lawyerization
- “Open Source” Is Nobody’s Property
- Two Tiny Web Apps
- Name this Contract Type
- Allowable Tolerances
- Antidote
- Pay-Per-Law, Inc.
- Neighbor Meals
- redline.commonform.org
- Common-Pool Pushovers
- edit.commonform.org
- Common Form, Simplified
- Site of Shame
- No Thanks
- Locked-In Customers Anonymous
- The Tote Bag
- Do Not Track or Do Not Sell
- Open COVID Pledge
- Intelligent Perception
- Sharetribe Community Public License 1.0, Line by Line
- Noncompete By Two Other Names
- Take the Money and Run
- CERN OHL-S 2.0, Line by Line
- Medtronic’s PB560 Ventilator License, Line by Line
- Section 1106 (Loan Forgiveness) of the CARES Act
- Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment
- Against Legal Technology
- Subscribe by E-Mail
- Open Source for Business 3e
- Sustain Podcast
- California Medical Directives at Home
- Not Those Dreams
- notlegaladvice.law
- Medical Advance Directives Working Group
- Blue Is Blue
- World Tour Canceled
- Name Calling Isn’t Precise
- Terms of Service, Take Two
- Terms of Service, Take One
- Foreign Virus
- Copyleft Has No Posse
- Dreams Creates a Commons?
- Short Spiel on Legal Tech
- Not Not Political
- This Mess We’re In
- Skimming Hippocratic License Version 2.0
- Untangling Tech Merit and Tech Privilege
- More Accessible
- Data Under Universal Share-Alike
- Reduce, Reuse, Reconsider
- Patent Potato
- Scratch Other People’s Itches
- Portland Trip Confirmed
- Copyleft Should be Scary
- CCPA Service Provider Addendum
- Open Source Should Come With Warranties
- Luis Villa’s Licensing Year in Review
- What did I just agree to?
- Portland in February
- Few-Maintainer Projects
- Renaming API Copyleft
- Starting Noncommercial
- API Copyleft 2.0.0-pre.1
2019 83
- Video Footnotes
- The Main Event
- The Doorway NDA
- Paste Your Terms Into Your E-Mails
- Teach Everyone to Be Like Us
- git push is the Process
- Big Time Public License
- Rakow 2019
- Correct and Intuitive Fairness
- I Am Not Advising Legally
- A Fistful of Services
- TNR12 and Be There
- npm fund
- Talking Points: Ethical Licenses
- Reading the WeAllJS Code of Conduct
- Universal Share-Alike License
- XML versus JSON
- Venture Capital Shill
- Nomadic Lawyering
- MulanPSL
- Heather Meeker on “Ethos Licensing”
- “BSD with PATENTS” and “BSD-2-Clause Plus Patent” are Not the Same
- Love this License
- Waypoint Trademark
- Blue Oak Guide to Copyleft
- CASE Act Flythrough
- Blue Oak Reading List
- Blue Oak Test Suite
- XLC Building Blocks
- Cross-License Collaboratives
- Blue Oak Guidance on Mergers and Acquisitions
- Standards, Patents, Open Source
- Our Ethics, Not Yours
- No LICENSE
- The Tyranny of Time
- Open Core is Not a Good Story
- Open Legal Podcast?
- Waypoint 2.0.0
- Here Comes the CCPA
- The Great Open Source Shake-Up
- Is this conference a good idea?
- Changeblog
- Require Credit For Your Software
- Waypoint Abroad
- PANDA for Privacy
- PolyForm 1.0.0
- Heather Meeker on Patent Risk Allocation
- Get In, Get Out
- Open Letters
- Help Take the Waypoint NDA International
- A Twit No More
- Dark Arts at Daybreak
- Operating Environment
- SSPL Was Not Commons Clause
- PolyForm Project
- Mortarboard Licenses
- Schools of Cohesion
- Prone Blogging Setup
- Tyranny of Permissionlessness
- Don’t Rely on OSI Approval
- AFL-3.0 versus OSL-3.0
- #wontfix
- The Waypoint NDA
- Calls to Sustainability Action via package.json
- Enterprise Ready Open Software License Supplement
- Stairway to Heaven
- The Diachronic Treadmill License
- License Utopia
- Ethical Subcommons Starter Kit
- Weak or Strong is Wrong
- Deprecation Notice: MIT and BSD
- Blue Oak Council
- Back to IP
- Indie Open Source
- Open Source Software License Reading List
- API Copyleft License 1.0.0
- First Thoughts on the Redis Source Available License Agreement
- API Copyleft
- Critique This License
- Outer Source
- Shared Component License
- The Discipline of Stated Purpose
- Availability Dashboard
2018 40
- Apache-2.0 versus ECL-2.0
- Open Source is Not About You
- Open Handicaps
- Selective Openness
- The Open Source Definition as Copyleft Regulation
- The Copyleft Bust Up
- How to Speak Copyleft
- Elsewhere: Mapping Open Business Models
- A Canting Tribe Are We
- Seeking Comment: Copyright Notice Recommendation
- Indirect Licensing
- Contributor Councils
- Motorcycles in the Wind
- Patents for Software Freedom
- Bilking Angels
- Crowd Hiring
- Quick Read of Tidelift’s Lifting Agreement
- Private Changes in Free Software Copyleft Licenses
- Enforce Open Source Licenses with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
- Unhappy Coincidences
- Selective Mythology
- Attending LegalHackers Summit
- The Decentralization Game
- The Posterity Public License
- Interviewed on Open Source and Money
- Digging Contracts Out of the Hole
- California Work Made for Hire Statutes
- Plain GDPR Processor Addendum
- Plain Terms of Service
- Proseline
- Six Great Deals Books
- Help Wanted
- Public Domain Chronicle
- MPL-2.0 versus OPL-2.1
- Transparent Contract Components
- Lexical Scope for Contracts
- Licence Libre du Québec – Réciprocité versus - Réciprocité forte
- I Have Another Blog
- CLAs are Not a Sham
- The Well Appointed Skinner Box
2017 20
- Contract Components
- Debian Free Software Guidelines versus the Open Source Definition
- Mercenary Rapport
- Unsustainability at Scale
- Feed this Bear
- Overkill
- The License Zero Manifesto
- Prescription Contracts
- Null Value
- Nobody’s Clients
- RxNDA.com
- Seven Takeaways from the SEC DAO Report
- Switchmode Developer Agreement
- Open Software Service Terms
- It’s Not About Community
- Open Source: Theory of Operation
- Debian 8.7 on Dell Optiplex 7010
- Open Source License Business Perception Report
- Against Legislating the Nonobvious
- The Mendicant Maintainerati
2016 16
- The MIT License, Line by Line
- The Earl of Ethereum’s Case
- Deal Mechanic
- Emancipation by Reference
- Node.js Streams
- IP Field Guide
- The JavaScript Joke Was on Me
- Circulation Policy
- Annotations in Context
- License from Who?
- I Don’t Want to Know What “Open Source” Means
- The Triplebyte Plan
- The Berneout Pledge
- First Read: The Fair Source License
- I’ll Never Be a Super Lawyer
- Startup Unix
2015 19
- Template Ambiguity
- What Enumeration Means
- The Blanks Problem
- Term Injection
- React Patent Redline
- Certificated Assent
- Hacking Common Form
- Terms of Service; Already Read
- Reproduction of Hierarchy
- Index Card Contracts
- Grab-Bag Contracts
- Named Provisions
- Common Form
- Blind Patches
- Modularity is not the Law
- The Halliburton Hypothesis
- Value Statement
- FTC 2014 Year in Review
- Common Form