On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 10:44:47PM +0200, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote: > [ CCing leader@d.o as he is the one ultimately signing the DC13 - > Debian agreement. ] Thanks. > *** Why do we need a legal body for DC13? *** Agreed: we clearly need one. > *** How this has been done in the past *** > > To my knowledge there have been two modes of solving this. Either an > already established organization was used (DC12, DC11) or a new > organization was formed for DebConf (DC7). An agreement was signed > between this association and Debian (signed by the DPL) that the > organization collects and holds money for DebConf. AFAIK the organizer > and liability issue I outlined above has been largely ignored. At least > it has not been explicitly mentioned in the agreement I have seen for > DC12. FWIW, the kind of agreements that have been signed in the past have been more like "memorandum of understanding" than real contracts. So, yes, liability has been ignored there, but it is my understanding that it wouldn't have been appropriate to have it in there. It probably wouldn't have had much legal binding power anyhow. > *** Possible solutions for DebConf 13 *** > > The easiest option to form a legal body for DebConf 13 is to form an > association (Verein) under Swiss civil law (Art. 60ff.) I disagree with this, as I've observed in the past. For one thing, it doesn't seem to me that it is *that* easy to create this association. One argument is that, if it were so, it'd have already existed by now, no? (But if the counter-argument to that is "we wanted to have an explicit ack before proceeding", fine.) Still, one extra association in a territory where one already exists will undeniably increase the overall bureaucratic burden (this is a "-" point that is surprisingly missing from the comparison on the wiki). I repeat myself, but my preference is to reuse debian.ch, and apply to it all sorts of "legal patching" that is needed to use it to run DebConf13. It looks like the liability part might be useful for other future Debian activities in Swiss in the future. (And just in case: no, I would not consider acceptable keeping DebConf13 running after DebConf turning it into yet another Debian Trusted Organization: Debian finances are already *too* scattered around the world and that makes accounting a PITA. The efforts over the last 3 years have been toward consolidating, rather than the converse direction.) So, this is my stance, even though I presume it was already clear from past exchanges on this matter. Nonetheless, I consider this as a DebConf team decision. Whatever option you choose, you'll (obviously) have my support and collaboration. Thanks for your work in organizing DebConf13, Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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