Re: [gentoo-nfp] Gentoo Social Contract and potential liabilities

[Anthony G. Basile]

On 10/24/15 10:49 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 10:28 AM, Anthony G. Basile
> <basile@××××××××××××××.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Hence we should get legal council here.
>>
>> Legal council is advise on what reasons fly in the courts.
>>
>> I don't want to play a guessing game.  Are you against getting legal advise
>> on this question?
>>
>
> Asked and answered.  :)
>
> On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 10:17 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>> On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 9:42 AM, Anthony G. Basile
>> <basile@××××××××××××××.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> It is not unreasonable to request legal council at this
>>> point so that we are better informed.
>>
>> By all means do so.  If there is some kind of legal precedent for any
>> of this I'm all ears.
>
> I'm pretty skeptical that anything strong will be found, but I'm not
> opposed to asking.  Lawyers aren't really the last word though, and
> they tend to be risk-averse.  If we stopped distributing Gentoo
> entirely then we'd be less likely to be sued for copyright violation,
> for example.  So, I wouldn't avoid something simply because of a
> hypothetical risk - risk needs to be weighed against benefit.

That's true, they're mostly risk adverse.  But asking is good no matter 
what answer we get.  These emails leave a track the we took due 
diligence.  That's what's bothering me after the last committee meeting. 
  We're all just bantering our opinions about and haven't sought any 
expert advice.  The other avenue is FSF.

>
> On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 10:28 AM, Anthony G. Basile
> <basile@××××××××××××××.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Contract are not just limited to software.
>>
>
> I'm not sure I claimed that they are.  I already said that if we were
> spending Gentoo money on services like Github it might be more
> problematic because arguably the contributors did not intend for the
> money to be spent in that manner.  On the other hand, contributions
> made after we made some announcement that we're officially using
> Github would arguably not be as much of a problem, since contributors
> would have had access to this information before they contributed.
>
> In any case, I think that we should be concerned about the Social
> Contract because that is a big part of what we're about.  I suspect
> we're already being a lot harder on ourselves than any court is likely
> to be.  Look at how a typical big US non-profit like the Red Cross
> spends its money and try to tell me with a straight face that we're
> doing a worse job of adhering to our mission.
>


-- 
Anthony G. Basile, Ph. D.
Chair of Information Technology
D'Youville College
Buffalo, NY 14201
[phone]