A thread on an open source project mailing list offers seven lessons on how toengage an open source community over legal issues. A thread on an Apache mailing list (Now safely in the past) provides a greatillustration of what not to do when your employer's interests seem to needengagement in an open source community. Instead of asking a suitably-trainedlawyer to directly engage, the company asked an engineer to engage when theywanted special terms for a contribution. They went on to propose custom terms,a custom CLA and even implied that they wanted private bilateral negotiations.This session runs through the thread and draws seven lessons for approachingan open source community with your legal issues.