OSDL hires lawyer, opens China office

Open Source Development Labs, a Beaverton, Ore.-based consortium devoted to improving Linux, has hired an attorney to handle intellectual-property matters and has opened a branch office in Beijing, the group said this week.

Diane Peters, an attorney at Ater Wynne's Portland office who previously provided outside legal advice to OSDL, now is the consortium's general counsel. And the Beijing branch's founding was endorsed by the Chinese government's Ministry of Information Industry, the China OSS Promotion Union and the China Electronics Standardization Institute. OSDL members include all major server makers and many top software companies. The consortium also employs Linux founder and leader Linus Torvalds.