Re: [gentoo-project] Formally have Council oversee the Foundation 2.0

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 1:46 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> That's my thinking as well.  If SPI can't be sued, then Gentoo or the top
> people still in and running Gentoo would be sued.

Of course SPI can be sued.  If I want to sue SPI all I need to do is
go down to a courtroom and file some papers and pay a filing fee.
That's what suing somebody is.  Now, if I don't have a reasonable
grounds for the lawsuit it might be quickly dismissed.

Nobody could sue "Gentoo" under the SPI model because "Gentoo" would
not be a legal entity.  They could certainly sue the "top people" in
it, as they can today.

> Let's say a dev did something that caused a lawsuit, say violated a
> copyright or something of that nature.  Why would SPI defend that when SPI
> has no control over what the dev did?

If SPI was named in the lawsuit they would defend themselves.  If they
weren't named in the lawsuit they wouldn't do anything.  If the Gentoo
project (that is, a loose association of Gentoo developers who have no
legal existence) told SPI to pay their legal bills using Gentoo's
money, then they probably would do so.

> The legal council they have seems to be used to keep SPI legal not
> the groups underneath them.

Certainly, but that is all that is needed.

> If a distro, whether it is Debian, Gentoo or
> someone else, violates someone else or breaks the law, they would have to
> defend themselves.

Certainly, though "Debian" is not a legal entity, so it has no need to
defend itself from a lawsuit, because you can't sue "Debian."  Some
individuals associated with Debian could be sued, and they would have
to defend themselves from the lawsuit.  However, they could only be
sued for things they're personally responsible for.

If somebody wanted to sue "Debian" they would probably sue SPI,
because that is who is holding all of Debian's money.  Presumably SPI
operates in such a manner as to make it hard to get it.

-- 
Rich