Sorry to be replying to this so late but the part of this thread that is living on drew me back into this where I realized I had not answered. On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 05:21:34PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: > >I am curious about why? You state you don't want to see it, but > >don't give any supporting argument. I myself am always very > >suspicious as to the motive of for profit companies appearing to > >leverage Free Software projects. > > Even "for profit companies" is a bit of a huge class of things to be > upset with. Most of them are just trying to earn some profit to > live from. Maybe "for-dividend companies" contain nearly all of the > ones we should worry about? Then again, excluding them is likely to > involve "friendly fire" on our allies. I'm not upset at for profit companies (I work for them and sometimes think about starting one or two). In speaking of non-profits, I was thinking more in line the line of some sort of legal "charitable organization" status that, at least in the US, does not restrict the ability to charge money and make a profit on a given transaction but does restrict dividends and some of the other ways that money can be spent. This use of "non-profit" is closer to NGO in many situations. I think this was just confusion about terminology. > >The contract/agreement that the entity using the "Debian Labs" name > >signs or agrees to, should likely be a legal document drafted by > >lawyers. > > Why would Debian want to increase the sums given to lawyers? It > should be drafted as simply as possible by people concerned and then > secured by lawyers under advice. SPI has access to pro-bono legal advice from some very good law firms including one lawyer working specifically on trademark issues. Of course, you are correct in saying we should list our goals and terms as well as we can first. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill mako@debian.org http://mako.yukidoke.org/
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