Groklaw was created in May 2003 to explain the law to the technical community and the technology to the legal community, so each group could work effectively with the other, applying open source principles to legal research. It was the first time anyone had tried to create such a combined community. Groklaw covers legal news of interest to the various communities that make up the free-software and open-source community, and it endeavors to be a voice for the FOSS community regarding such news events.

However, it is primarily an experiment not only in citizen journalism but also in applying open source principles - taking advantage of the internet’s distributed and collaborative enabling technology - to research, collect and publish timely information of relevance to litigation it covers that is in the news. For example, when the SCO Group began threatening to sue Linux end users, Groklaw wrote an open letter to SCO, which was eventually cited in an IBM legal filing (www.groklaw.net/pdf/IBM-880Ex608.pdf) as having provided SCO with notice regarding requests from the Linux community for specifics as to any allegedly misused code.

Groklaw also does prior art searching on request and offers attorneys the opportunity to ask Groklaw member technical questions they need to understand to properly represent clients in litigation.

Groklaw is supported by members all over the world, with approximately 12,000 members currently. They contribute volunteer time to the various tasks that need doing: obtaining legal documents, attending court hearings, researching claims by the parties, making sure that PDFs are made available as plain text, so the information is readily searchable and also available to those who rely on screen readers, and maintaining the numerous projects.

Pamela Jones (US) is the creator and editor of Groklaw. However, Groklaw publishes articles and interviews by others, both lawyers and technical experts from the community.