Carlo Piana
@kappapiana
Italy
Carlo Piana is a lawyer by training and a free software advocate. A qualified attorney in Italy, Piana has been practicing IT law since 1995, focusing his practice on software, technology, standardisation, data protection and digital liberties in general, and served as external general counsel to the Free Software Foundation Europe (“FSFE”). Piana has been involved in some of the cornerstone legal cases in Europe, such as the long-running antitrust battle between the EU Commission and Microsoft, where he represents both the FSFE and the Samba Team, the standardization of OOXML at ISO/IEC, and more recently defending Oracle in its attempted acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Piana is a member of the Editorial Committee of the International Free and Open-Source Software Law Review (“IFOSS L. rev.”) and has been a member of the board of the Open-Source Initiative since 2022. In 2008 he established a freelance consulting practice on IT law, where he leads a small group of IT lawyers named Array. As of October 2023, Carlo Piana is the new chair of the board of the Open-Source Initiative (OSI), the California-based entity responsible for managing the definition of Open Source. This definition is crucial in determining whether software can be classified as Open Source.