Many have inquired about our involvement in Free Software, AKA open source software, because a glimpse of coverage we received from the international press. While we know that journalists are curious by nature, we reluctantly speak about it when interviewed, and prefer to go to the subject matter. Nonetheless, to provide some general background, a few lines are mandatory.

We started implementing "open source" IT apparatus since the foundation of the firm, and thus became involved in the market as simple customers, without any major commitment and out of curiosity. At that time we had several years' experience in Information Technology Law, as well as a technical background in the software market. The need arouse for competent hands-on assistance, and we found it natural to seek it from the local LUG (Linux User Group),namely, the MiLUG.

We got in touch with some representatives of the Italian branch of the Free Software Fondation Europe, and started to advise them submarinely on a number of issues. The hell broke loose when rumors about soon-to-be antitrust sanctions against one major software house lead us an innocent inquiry as to what was the position of the FSFE was. The hectic follow-up to this innocent question is today difficult to report. The bottom line is that we received a proxy to act on behalf of the FSFE and the Samba Team and were fully immersed in what was meant an idle, formal representation of a charitable association in a serious business dispute, and turned out to be a full-fledged primetime antitrust litigation, which now runs into the tens of thousand pages of brief, documents, expertises. The main installment of it has ended on the 17 September 2007 with a judgment clearly finding as demanded by the party we represent. Meanwhile we have taken over also the position of another important player of the Free Software area, Openoffice.org.

To make a long story short, we are not a full-time Free Software Law advising firm, and our software-related clients are also within the "proprietary" sector. For a series of coincidences, however, we discovered that a lot of our already existing IT clients were also very interested in "open source" and soon got back to us for the various legal implication of this very strange specialty, and more approached, also because Carlo Piana was selected as legal editor of Linux Magazine, and more recently of Linea EDP, one of the leading IT-for-business weekly magazines in Italy, besides publishing on a regular basis on Interlex, a quite famous IT law review.

We are so deep into this that Carlo Piana has been appointed to advise the Software Freedom Law Center and the Free Software Foundation on the adoption of the new GNU GPL v. 3, and now are part of the European Legal Network of the Freedom Task Force of the FSFE.