The legal backdrop for the free software movement is always changing. Court decisions and government actions constantly reshape the landscape and have subtle effects on the climate for software development. For instance, one country recently proposed a law that would require a programmer to be "licensed" or "certified" to write software. According to local FOSS developers, it could make hobbyist programming "a crime." Another country proposed a law that would mandate free software, which sounds promising, but it was written in a way that left little chance of passage. With some changes to the wording, the law could have been effective without raising objections from conservative legislators.

Another proposed law intended to help eliminate child pornography was modified to limit all sorts of online freedoms, to the point (as voiced by a constituent) of making technologies like mesh networking difficult to implement.

Last month, I wrote about my experience testifying before a national assembly that was considering a new law related to the open source world. Although opportunities like this don't come up every day, you might be surprised at how often governments at all levels take on topics related to the open source community. A few years ago, the state of Massachusetts' decision to adopt open formats made news around the world. More recently, developers in the Canadian province of Quebec have filed suit to require that open source office software receive fair consideration in government contracts.

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