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

[Anthony G. Basile]

On 10/24/15 2:00 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 12:02 PM, Anthony G. Basile
> <basile@××××××××××××××.edu> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Honestly, in this field there aren't actually a lot of bona-fide
> experts, because there isn't a lot of bona-fide litigation.  How many
> court decisions have there been around FOSS licenses and issues?  Just
> about everybody offers their opinions.  :)
>
> But, I certainly don't object to getting advice.

Let's just set a low limit on the cost and see if anything comes back. 
You can say to lawyers this is low concern so we don't want to spend too 
much money on pursuing it.  Lawyers I've dealt with understand that.

>
>> The other avenue is FSF.
>
> I'd be curious was to what advice they'd give, but we already fall far
> short of their ideals.  As I mentioned, gentoo.org would probably not
> rate even a C on their source repository evaluation because we
> recommend the use of evil licenses like GPL2+ instead of the more
> appropriate GPL3+.  And I'm all for switching to GPL3+, but they tend
> to represent more of an extreme than Gentoo in general, and obviously
> they have a bias, even if it is a bias I tend to be sympathetic to.

Debian is very serious about their SC.  We could also ask them.  The FSF 
is a bit theoretical or out of touch with the dirty practical world.  To 
take the burden off of people, let me see if I can approach a Debian 
council member and see what they might say.

>
> SPI and other organizations might be useful.
>
> In any case, from what I can tell the Trustees are trying to sort out
> the counsel situation in general anyway, as I believe Matt had been
> dealing with most of that in the past.  The Foundation does generally
> try to seek legal advice when necessary, and I think it is mostly
> pro-bono.  There are actually a few organizations that would probably
> offer us various kinds of legal services from advice to
> administration.
>

The foundation is aware now and can deliberate on their own.  Sven's 
line of business makes him well versed in these sorts of issues.  I 
brought it up to him in IRC.

I really hate it when we banter back and forth about what our opinions 
are and really just become an echo chamber.  Several dev have now stated 
that they are concerned about github.  Some of their concerns are the 
fact we don't control it, others are just technical/taste, other are the 
increased work with more contributions.

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