EX-SFLC general counsel to head GNOME Foundation

Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 22 June 2011 09:13

Opinion and Analysis

Former general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Centre, Karen Sandler, has been appointed as the executive director of the GNOME Foundation.

She replaces Robyn "Stormy" Peters who stepped down from the post last November to work for Mozilla, the non-profit behind the Firefox web browser.

The Foundation provides financial, legal and organisational support to the GNOME Desktop Project which was jointly founded by Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero in 1997.

Prior to joining the SFLC, Sandler worked for the legal firms of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York and Clifford Chance in New York and London.

She studied law at Columbia Law School where she was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. She also has a bachelor's degree in engineering from The Cooper Union and is admitted to practice in New York state.

Sandler is also an officer of the Software Freedom Conservancy.

A media release from the Foundation quoted SFLC founder Eben Moglen as saying: "As our general counsel, she (Sandler) has been in the truest sense a lawyer's lawyer. In representation of our clients she has been a superbly creative and conscientious practitioner. As mentor to younger lawyers here, she has set the finest of examples. The GNOME Foundation could not have chosen more wisely.'

Sandler comes to the post at a time when GNOME has just launched a new version of its desktop which has received mostly negative reviews.