[Board] Statement of OSGeo Legal Support

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

As I imagine you are aware, Cameron Shorter has suggested that the
board be explicit about the sort of legal support the foundation is
willing to extend to projects and project developers.  In this context
the issue is primarily acting to protect projects and developers that
are sued (or legally threatened), and our undertaking litigation to
stop license violations by those using our software.

We discussed this in the board meeting today and we seemed to have a
rough consensus that we don't have the resources to make a broad
commitment taking legal action.  Instead that as situations come up the
board would consider them on a case by case basis and get involved or not
as is appropriate and possible.

Furthermore, though we didn't discuss it in the meeting, I think there
is general agreement that actually sueing an organization that is violating
the open source license of one of our projects would be a worst case
situation, and that we would prefer to educate violators in order to encourage
them to come into compliance.

We also discussed the possibility of projects associated with OSGeo
assigning copyright or otherwise also be affiliated with an organizations
such as the FSF that could provide legal support and we agreed this was
reasonable and acceptable.

I promised to draft a statement and to put it out where all the board can
consider it before we declare it policy.  My suggested statement is:

"""
OSGeo intends to be a legal representative of it's projects, and
to act legally on their behalf as appropriate.  However, OSGeo
reserves the right, at board discretion, to decide what legal
resources to allocate and to what particular issues to allocate them.

If an OSGeo project, or developer is sued, or legally threatened,
on a matter related to an OSGeo project they may seek OSGeo legal
support.  OSGeo's board will decide what resources, if any, to provide
to support the project or developer.

If an OSGeo project or developer finds that an organization is in
violation of the open source license of the project, they can seek
OSGeo assistance to enforce the license.   Generally speaking OSGeo
will attempt to educate license violators in an effort to bring them
into compliance.  Legal action for such violations will only be
considered by OSGeo in particularly strategic situations and would
be at the discretion of the board.
"""

This statement does not attempt to specify the criteria the board
would use in deciding on legal support to provide.  I assume cost,
danger to the developer/project, "righteousness" of the defender,
and strategicness of the issue would be factors but I don't feel
a need to be specific.

This statement does not address our legal support for foundation
officers, members or supports involved in activities not directly
related to software projects, though again I imagine somewhat similar
criteria.

This statement does not address availability of routine legal
advice - for instance in resolving code provenance or license
issues during incubation.   Our current policy on that is that
Tyler can engage legal advice on general foundation issues as
he judges needed, and I can do so on matters related to incubation
and "software project IP issues" (which I have delgated to Chris
in regard to GeoTools).

The statement is pretty darn wishy-washy.  It doesn't promise
anything really, but makes it clear (I hope) that our resources
are limited, and will be made available at the boards discretion.
Furthermore, that where avoidable we will generally not start
litigation.

I'm opening things for some discussion here.  If (or once) we
seem to have consensus I'll write this up as a formal motion for
our next board meeting.  I don't think there is any reason it needs
to be settled immediately.  But if we do have consensus here, I
would like to take the proposed statement back to the discuss list
so more of OSGeo can easily comment before we adopt it as policy.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org