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

[Luis Villa]

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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>>
>