Folks,
Bruce Perens is a luminary in the open source world, and known as a
founder of the Debian project, and author of the Free Software
Definition - a foundational document for the concept of OSI approved
open source licenses.
Bruce Perens wrote:
A long time ago we planned for SPI to protect Debian developers from
liability connected with their development of Free Software. That never
came to fruition. With the sword-rattling going on by various patent
holders, it's a goal even more worth carrying out today.
Some of us have homes, and other property that we would rather not place
at risk of any lawsuit connected with our Free Software activities. The
way to do that is to act as a volunteer on the behalf of a non-profit
corporation, with the corporation assuming your liability. It is
possible to insure you against those risks, but it's much more expensive
- potentially 1.5 to 2.5 percent of your net worth per year per member.
It's better to put the risk in the lap of an entity that doesn't own
anything. We can potentially do it at zero cost to the member that way.
There is a downside. If you work on behalf of such an entity, you would
have to agree to act at their direction, which means acting responsbily
on their behalf, by not doing stupid stuff that obviously increases the
corporation's risk of being sued. This doesn't really have to do with
practical software, but with what some consider freedom-of-speech issues
like obscentity or hate speech. For that reason, this would be strictly
opt-in. It would not be directly associated with SPI or Debian, because
we could never get all of the DDs to agree about this, and because SPI
owns property that we do not want to expose to liability. Copyrights of
software produced would be assigned to a non-profit like FSF or SPI*
I am asking for current free software authors in the United States who
would be interested in being protected from liability, and would join me
in a request to the Software Freedom Law Center to assist us by creating
such an entity. If you would like to do that, please reply to me at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] . Further discussion will be carried out separately
from SPI and Debian lists.
Thanks
Bruce
* There should also be limits on how much software a single non-profit
has in its risk pool, this is a good question for SFLC.
At the time it was founded, OSGeo also had a goal to provide legal
resources, and perhaps assume legal liability for developers of OSGeo
project. This is not a role that OSGeo has worked to address since
founding, and it is unclear how much liability it would be willing to
assume.
I've asked Bruce for more information on his efforts, either with an
eye towards OSGeo fulfilling this role of legal liability shield for
developers, or possibly with the idea of addressing this via some
separate entity such as the one he envisages establishing.
I'm interested in others thoughts on the importance of the role of
legal liability shield. Such thoughts would be well expressed
here on OSGeo discuss.
Bruce is also interested in other open source software developers
expressing interest in his effort to help justify forming a corporation.
You can contact him as noted above.
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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