Re: shielding from liability
From: john@win.bright.net
> It may not. An employee is working under the supervision of the
> corporation: he's "just following orders". The corporation is presumed to
> be checking his work, so if his screwups get out it is held liable. Can you
> argue that the maintainers are acting under your control and supervision?
Yes. These people have been delegated a specific set of programs to
work on by an staff member I appointed. Their job is to act on behalf
of the corporation in maintaining those programs, which are provided to
them by third parties not associated with Debian in most cases. Some of
the maintainers do assign copyrights to SPI. If necessary I can start
documenting in a more formal way that these people are following the
orders of a director of the corporation, and even give them contracts.
We also have an employer ID if it is necessary to go that far.
It's important to note that the corporation distributes the software,
not the individuals.
> I was arguing that there is no contract and therefore no duty.
> I don't know of any case law on that, though.
There is at least an implicit contract when we give them access to our
internal systems to perform work for us. We could make it explicit.
There is also some new law on liability of volunteers this year. Its major
thrust was to remove liability from emergency services volunteers, such as
radio hams who are providing communications in a disaster situation. I don't
know how it effects other sorts of volunteers.
> Does SPI have an attorney? Have you discussed these issues with her?
Yes, and the attorney formed the corporation for us. The main reason for
forming the corporation was so that we could pursue grants to work on free
software, not to protect us from liability. I will ask the attorney to make
suggestions on how we can firm up liability protection for the members.
Bruce
--
Can you get your operating system fixed when you need it?
Linux - the supportable operating system. http://www.debian.org/support.html
Bruce Perens K6BP bruce@debian.org 510-215-3502
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