[gentoo-nfp] Software in Public Interest, cont...

[Yuri Vasilevski]

Hello,

My apologies for not continuing the previous thread, but at the time
the replays to my previous message where sent, I was not subscribed to
this list.

Back to the issue, taking into account the corrections that Ferris
McCormick kindly added and the positivism I sensed in his response, I
talked with Bdale Garbee regarding us, Gentoo Fundation, joining the
SPI and discussed the previous e-mail I sent as well as fmccor's replay.

Basically the response I got was a confirmation on everything Luk Glass
has told me before (my first e-mail), and he went a little bit more in
detail regarding the legal services they can provide:

bdale: there is a lawyer in a firm in New York who provides pro-bono
services to SPI, the most recent thing his firm did was to give us an
opinion on the licensing of thumbnails of game screen snapshots
bdale: we have a relationship with the SFLC and can help get their
attention on project issues in the past, when we have had legal issues
in other countries, including Spain and Brazil that I remember, we have
been able to find and use lawyers in those countries who helped us
solve problems there on a pro-bono basis
bdale: we do not have a "magic list" of lawyers around the world, but
SPI has a good reputation and our associated projects have friends all
over the world, so we can usually find some help to address problems
almost anywhere we need to

He also mentioned:

bdale: the only caution I would provide is that the legal assistance
available is not an infinitely deep well of resources.  we have a
pro-bono legal council in the USA, we have relationships with some
lawyers in other countries like Spain and Brazil that are willing to
help us and our associated projects with occasional issues in those
countries, and we have a relationship with the SFLC where we can help
get their attention focused on a problem of an associated project
bdale: as long as that is understood, I think we would be happy
to have Gentoo as an associated project, and to make our services
available to the Gentoo community

And he already talked with a couple other board members and they both
agree that it'd be great to have Gentoo as an associated project.

So I think that we really should approach them for our inclusion. I was
told that the process should be the following, we need to let them know
that we would like to join with a specific one person contact address
and they post info about us to a "private" list (all contributing
members can discuss about our inclusion) and about 3 weeks later they
have a vote on the board and send us a formal invitation for joining.

Kindest regards,
Yuri.