Re: Liability protection project - call for participants

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com> writes:

> 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.

There are other potential downsides and complex legal interactions, such
as interactions with existing personal umbrella policies which some people
already carry and interactions with liability insurance already carried by
employers when one's Debian work is wholly or partially in the context of
some other employment.  There are also possible conflict-of-interest
issues for those whose employers are fine with personal contributions to
volunteer projects but may not feel the same way about affiliation with a
registered non-profit in an area of work that could be argued to be
competing.

I think it's important that, if this comes to fruition, it comes with very
good legal advice attached, and I think that legal advice may need to be
tailored to the specific circumstances of individual developers.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>