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On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 11:31 AM, William L. Thomson Jr. |
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<wlt-ml@××××××.com> wrote: |
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> On Monday, January 16, 2017 10:06:09 AM EST Rich Freeman wrote: |
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>> |
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>> > The SPI provides legal assistance, it does not take over all legal matters |
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>> > and also uses the SFLC. Gentoo may still need its own legal |
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>> > representation. Their legal assistance is also at their discretion, |
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>> > unlike other services. |
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>> If we moved to SPI we would dissolve the Foundation. There would be |
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>> no "Gentoo" to seek legal representation. |
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> |
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> Just because you go to the SPI does not mean Gentoo does not exist. If you get |
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> rid of the Foundation that is another matter. Some legal entity still has to |
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> own that stuff. |
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That would be the SPI. For an example, see: |
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https://www.debian.org/trademark |
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The whole idea of using an umbrella org is to let them own all the |
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property, and manage it. There would be no point to keeping the |
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Gentoo Foundation around if we went along this route, since it |
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provides no additional benefit, and it would require all the overhead |
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that it requires today. |
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> |
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> The SPI does not simply handle any law suits! They are NOT a legal body. They |
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> are financial, accountants, tax attorneys not legal ones. They use the SFLC for |
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> legal purposes. |
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> |
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I don't have a problem with them using SFLC for legal purposes. |
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And nobody really has a choice about whether they'll handle lawsuits. |
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If you own property, then you better have a plan for handling |
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lawsuits. I suspect that SPI has thought this through a bit more than |
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we have historically. |
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In any case, the point is that if Gentoo moves under SPI then there |
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would be no "Gentoo" to sue. "Gentoo" would be a trademark of SPI. |
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Any copyrights on our works that are held centrally would belong to |
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SPI. Our money would be stored in SPI bank accounts. So, if you want |
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our stuff, you have to sue SPI. |
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The whole point of SPI is to free up numerous FOSS projects to be able |
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to do things like spend money and have trademarks without all the |
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overhead of running their own foundations to do these sorts of things. |
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And of course none of us precludes us from working with other umbrella |
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orgs in other jurisdictions if there is some benefit to doing so. I |
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don't suggest doing it simply for the sake of doing it, but it is of |
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course an option. |
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-- |
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Rich |
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