Speaker - Bradley M. Kuhn

Bradley M. Kuhn is the Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence at Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC). Kuhn began his work in the software freedom movement as a volunteer in 1992, as an early adopter of Linux-based systems and contributor to various FOSS projects, including Perl. He worked during the 1990s as a system administrator and software developer for various companies, and taught AP Computer Science at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. Kuhn’s non-profit career began in 2000, when he was hired by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). As FSF’s Executive Director from 2001–2005, Kuhn led FSF’s GPL enforcement, launched its Associate Member program, and invented the Affero GPL. Kuhn began as SFC’s primary volunteer from 2006–2010, and became its first staff person in 2011. Kuhn's work at SFC focuses on enforcement of the GPL agreements, FOSS licensing policy, and non-profit infrastructural solutions for FOSS. Kuhn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in Computer Science from Loyola University in Maryland, and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati. Kuhn’s Master’s thesis discussed methods for dynamic interoperability of Free Software programming languages. Kuhn received the Open Source Award in 2012, and the Award for the Advancement of Free Software in 2021 — both in recognition for his lifelong policy work on copyleft licensing and its enforcement.