Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: "Steven J. Long" <slong@××××××××××××××××××.uk>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-project] Re: RFC: New project: Licenses
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2013 18:02:41
Message-Id: 20131211181208.GB23382@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk
1 On Fri, Nov 29, 2013, Roy Bamford wrote:
2 > On 2013.11.22 09:38, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
3 > > > On Thu, 21 Nov 2013, Roy Bamford wrote:
4 > >
5 > > > ... or maybe a sub committee of the Gentoo Foundation Inc?
6 > > > because of the non technical and legal implications of the work.
7 > > > Trustees get involved with licence corner cases anyway, so a team
8 > > > of advisors would be a good fit.
9 > >
10 > > I'd rather avoid the term "advisors", because we're no lawyers and
11 > > therefore cannot give any legal advice.
12 >
13 > Accepted. Licenses already uses the trustees when legal advice is
14 > required.
15
16 > > It it clear that in some cases the licenses team will escalate issues
17 > > to the trustees and not to the council.
18
19 I'm not sure why anything would ever need to go to Council, which is the
20 technical committee. If something is a license violation, I can see the
21 legal committee wanting it implemented, but that does not require Council
22 approval, nor should it: it should just go via QA, who are answerable to
23 Council in terms of how they implement (ie how it works technically.)
24
25 The substantive point (of license compliance and legal consequents) can
26 never be appealed to Council, since it is completely outside their
27 purview. For Council to rule on any such issues would be ultra vires, in
28 UK terms.
29
30 Please do not mistake this with any sort of turf war: the Trustees are
31 here to serve the developer community, and work with Council rather than
32 compete in any sense of the word. That does not mean that Council are
33 on the line for any of the Trustees' responsibilities: that's the whole
34 point of the Foundation setup; to keep developers happy, by keeping the
35 non-development work out of their hair.
36
37 > Nevertheless, I see a project
38 > > (TLP or sub-project) as a good enough fit. So no need to invent new
39 > > structures for us. The main goal of having a project page is to
40 > > increase our visibility and to have a convenient starting point for
41 > > organising our information in the wiki.
42 >
43 > The Foundation bylaws already allow for committees, none have been
44 > created yet but it would not be inventing a new structure.
45 >
46 > None of this has anything to do with Licenses having a project page
47 > or not.
48
49 You're absolutely right that such a project would have to come under
50 the purview of Trustees, via a committee if that is the statutory
51 method. It would make little difference to the day-to-day operation,
52 but there is clearly no mandate for Council to oversee it, and the
53 Trustees are the ones who both have jurisdiction, and would be on
54 the line for any legal problems Gentoo might ever face.
55
56 I don't think most developers are interested in the details, just the
57 results: it's not a technical issue at all. Although it does require
58 knowledge of software, legal nous is much more important. Of course
59 there are many similarities, but that doesn't mean it's a technical
60 issue in the software development sense, by any means.
61
62 --
63 #friendly-coders -- We're friendly, but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)