Tomasz, This is a very interesting and relevant question.
To the extent that there is an implied and enforceable contract between donor and donee that a donation not be neglected or removed from public use, if a donated item were to actually be removed from public use, that would definitely be actionable in the courts. Whether one would prevail or not would depend on the competency of their argument. If the LCM is a non-profit corporation, their inventory of computers are considered public property, and therefore subject to specific rules for disposition. However, I believe (but could be wrong) that the LCM was a foundation of sorts, so the same rules wouldn't necessarily apply. Foundations are typically of a private nature, and so to the extent that the wishes of the donor are to be honored, they would have to be explicitly established. Otherwise, as a gift to the foundation, the foundation could then reasonably do with the property what it wished per its own needs or desires, irrespective of the considerations of the donor. I'm hoping Rich Alderson will pipe in and give us the actual story as to what's going on with the LCM and its collection, but there's a possibility that he may be legally constricted from giving comment at this time. Sellam On Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 9:13 PM Tomasz Rola via cctalk < [email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 12:34:29PM -0400, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > > > [...] > > > > Even if it doesn't reopen, I'd hope that its collection would not > > simply be scrapped. I imagine a lot of people here would be > > interested in parts of it. I'm one of them... > > If I was a donator, I would now be writing an rather officially > looking letter to let them know, that if they have intention to misuse > my donation then I have intention to have it back. > > So they have to stuff this paper into their files and maybe even be > nice to donator. > > I have no idea how this seems from the side of the law - is it at all > possible that donator can claim his donation back? If there is a good > reason for this, of course. It was given to the museum, with purpose > to have it exhibited or otherwise used by some group of people. If > museum is being scrapped for good, then this purpose is not going to > be fulfilled, so???... > > Or, if museum decided to give it to some artistic movement, which used > it in their performances - say, peeing on olde computer, making it puff > and throw sparks, under the slogans painted on the wall, claiming this > very computer enabled certain pitiful aspects of western civilization > (which I will not name, so as to not have attention of bots). > > How is that called in English law-speak, abuse of good faith? > > -- > Regards, > Tomasz Rola > > -- > ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** > ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** > ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** > ** ** > ** Tomasz Rola mailto:[email protected] ** >
