[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Luis Villa joins WMF as Deputy General Counsel

Wed Feb 20 09:34:28 UTC 2013

Welcome, Luis, from all of us in the UK!

Richard Symonds
Wikimedia UK
0207 065 0992

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On 19 February 2013 23:51, Luis Villa <lvilla at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> I subscribed while still interviewing, admittedly under a different
> address. :) Thanks for the warm welcome, James- I look forward to working
> with everyone.
>
> Luis
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 3:49 PM, James Alexander
> <jalexander at wikimedia.org>wrote:
>
> > Responding to this to to make sure it gets to Wikimedia-l and to be the
> > first to say on Wikimedia-l \o/ WELCOME!
> >
> > Luis seems like the perfect dGC for us with his experience and
> background.
> > Watch out for Geoff he's dangerous and crafty!
> >
> > James
> >
> > Copying in Luis since I'm not sure if he's on here yet or not :)
> >
> > James Alexander
> > Manager, Merchandise
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> > (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 3:37 PM, Geoff Brigham <gbrigham at wikimedia.org
> >wrote:
> >
> >> *Hi everyone, *
> >>  * *
> >> *I’m simply thrilled to welcome Luis Villa to the Foundation as our new
> >> Deputy General Counsel.*
> >> *
> >> Thanks to Kat Walsh, I met Luis during my first months at the
> >> Foundation.  Kat loves Luis, and it is no wonder why.  In addition to
> >> being a superb lawyer, Luis is an open source developer, has worked with
> >> leaders in our Internet legal circles, and has a great personality that
> >> embraces our culture.
> >> *
> >> *
> >> His most recent adventure took place at the Palo Alto office of
> Greenberg
> >> Traurig, one of the top  global law firms.  There he worked with
> well-known
> >> Internet lawyers like Ian Ballon and Heather Meeker.   Luis focused on
> >> technology transactions, helping clients create solutions to licensing
> >> problems, with a particular emphasis on open source and software
> standards.
> >> His clients included Mozilla, the Open Compute Project, and a variety of
> >> clients large and small.  Luis successfully defended Google in the
> >> Oracle-Google/Android lawsuit, primarily working on the question of API
> >> copyrightability. I hired Luis as outside counsel to work on a tough
> >> legal matter for us, and his answers were on point, clear, and
> practical.
> >> *
> >> *
> >> Luis’ first contact with free software came was when he was in college
> >> at Duke University. There he studied political science and computer
> >> science, began using Linux, and helped triage Mozilla's bugzilla. A
> >> professor paid him to play with Lego, resulting in brief maintainership
> of
> >> the GPL’d LegOS operating system and co-authorship of the book "Extreme
> >> Mindstorms".
> >> *
> >> *
> >> After graduation, Luis worked at Ximian, a Linux desktop startup, doing
> >> quality assurance and eventually managing the desktop team. As part of
> >> that, he got heavily involved in the GNOME desktop project, becoming
> >> bugmaster and then getting elected to the board of directors. After
> Ximian
> >> was acquired, Luis became "geek in residence" at Harvard Law School's
> >> Berkman Center. At Berkman, he translated from lawyer to geek, and
> managed,
> >> maintained, and developed several software projects.
> >> *
> >> *
> >> After Berkman, Luis started his legal ventures in life at Columbia Law
> >> School, where he was Editor in Chief of the Science and Technology Law
> >> Review, was awarded honors each year, and was co-recipient of the class
> >> prize for excellence in intellectual property scholarship. His thesis
> dealt
> >> with the use of software standards as part of antitrust enforcement.
> >> Outside of class, he participated in the GPL revision process, worked in
> >> the General Counsel's office at Red Hat, and developed a surprisingly
> >> strong attachment to New York City.
> >> *
> >> *
> >> After law school, Luis worked in the legal department at Mozilla, where
> >> his major project was revising the Mozilla Public License. The license
> got
> >> over a thousand words shorter, and gained stronger patent protections
> and
> >> compatibility with the Apache and GPL licenses. Luis also worked on
> >> privacy, contracts, standards bodies, and other issues.
> >> *
> >> *
> >> Outside of work, Luis is an invited expert to the World Wide Web
> >> Consortium's Patents and Standards Interest Group, and a board member
> and
> >> chair of the Licensing Committee at the Open Source Initiative. He also
> >> enjoys biking, photography, history, Duke basketball (men's and
> women's),
> >> and eating.
> >> *
> >> *
> >> Luis's first Wikipedia edit under his current user name dates to Feb.
> >> 2007. Like any good pedant, he has also been making minor spelling and
> >> grammar corrections anonymously for many years.
> >> *
> >> *
> >> So, as you can tell, we are extremely excited about having Luis on our
> >> team and wish him a warm welcome.
> >> *
> >> * *
> >> *Cheers, *
> >> * *
> >> *Geoff*
> >> --
> >> Geoff Brigham
> >> General Counsel
> >> Wikimedia Foundation
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >>
> >
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