[Board] Statement of OSGeo Legal Support

[Markus Neteler]

Frank,

thanks for drafting the statement.

I wonder if we could negotiate beforehand some collaboration with other
like-minded organizations/foundations to have them in the background
for worst case scenarios. In case that we can achieve an agreement with them,
we could then also state so in our policy (to make it more credible).
I am thinking
of the organizations already mentioned in this discussion.

Markus


On Nov 3, 2007 7:04 AM, Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam at pobox.com> wrote:
...
> 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.
> """