Allan Doyle wrote:
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, it's a topic that has renewed
relevance.
From the sound of it, OSGeo itself has too many eggs in its basket to
risk having them broken by providing a shield.
Allan,
Well, this is a concern at least. I still think OSGeo *might* be
the appropriate organization to serve as a liability shield for
developers on OSGeo projects. But as a director I am also quite
nervous about taking on liability for the organization, and I can't
help but think about what would happen to various OSGeo efforts if
the foundation was sucked under in a big legal battle.
The reason I suspect OSGeo may be the right organization is that it
already has established a reporting structure and rules around what
constitutes appropriate contribution to foundation projects. By that
measure I think we are already "directing" in the sense that Bruce
mentions.
> But that ought not stop
geo-foss developers from either joining up with Bruce's idea or from
setting up a geo-clone of that idea.
>
Ideally, the legal issues would only have to be worked out once, and
everyone who wanted could join the "shield". There's nothing inherently
different about geo in this case, is there?
I do not believe there is anything special about geo.
For now I'm mainly watching with interest - especially I'm looking forward
to seeing what some real lawyers at the Software Freedom Law Center have to
say about the topic. I doubt that we should be doing much in the meantime
other than expressing interest to Bruce if we think this is an important
thing to do.
Best regards,
--
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org
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