"Walter Landry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
John Goerzen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Back in summer 2006, there was a thread regarding the inclusion of Sun's
Java under the DLJ in Debian's non-free area on its FTP site.
Questions about the license were raised at that time. In my
then-capacity as president of SPI, I asked SPI's attorney to give advice
on the questions. For various reasons, we just recently have the
answers back.
Current DPL Anthony Towns and SPI President Bdale Garbee have asked me
to summarize the situation here. SPI's attorney has asked that his
messages not be posted to public mailing lists for reasons of
attorney-client privilege.
The short answer is that there should not be a legal liability on SPI
from this action. Due to the indemnification clause in the Sun license,
there is a possibility -- though it is remote -- of legal liability on
some or all Debian developers. Just whom such theoritical liability
would rest upon depends on whether the ftpmasters are acting on their
own behalf or on that of the organization, which is unclear
legally-speaking at the present moment.
Does this potential liability include mirror operators? Also, I
presume that you don't really mean *all* Debian developers. I do not
see how it could extend beyond the ftpmasters, the DPL, the package
maintainers, and perhaps some other officials in Debian.
Agreed. If a judge does not view Debin as any sort of oranization or
corporation
for legal purposes, then it seems unlikely that any person who was not
involved with this package
would have any liability.
Alternatively a judge could potentially decide that Debian is some form of
organization/company/corporation (It has a constitution, bylaws, elected
officials,
and the TC could perhaps be interpreted as a Board of Directors [Although
that would
not be very accurate.]). In this case, I could see the possbily of liability
ending on one or
more of the elected officials, but still not see how unrelated regular
developers would have liability.
IANAL. IANADD
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