(re-sent without attachment) On 01/12/15 15:36, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > On Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 03:17:33PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: >> Let's give them a part of our money for the service they do us by >> enforcing the GPL for Debian developers. > > We already pay for those services. There is a forfait amount of money > that Debian pays to Conservancy per year (1000 USD, IIRC), which > corresponds to a forfait amount of lawyer hours that Conservancy give to > Debian per year. If any enforcement (or other legal) action will require > more than those hours, Conservancy will bill Debian for the extra time. > > If we want to donate to Conservancy, it should be on a different basis > than paying for the services we get from them, because those are > regulated on a contractual basis. >
As mentioned elsewhere, there is more than one way to skin a cat Many companies purchase legal insurance to cover contract disputes, bad debts, employee disputes and not surprisingly, copyright disputes. I had a brief look around at Swiss insurers and the first one I found is offering 150,000 CHF sum insured for copyright law (see policy[1] PDF, page 11, point 7). On page 3 it suggests this sum insured is per-case, not per-year. The insurer also takes care of other things, for example, if a case is lost and the other party claims their legal costs, the developer won't be bankrupted as the insurance would pay for that too. I wrote to Conservancy and asked if they have similar protection in place and I haven't yet received a reply. The insurer also provides an advice helpline (see page 8). I sent the insurer an email specifically asking if they would have covered the VMware lawsuit. So while people are free to give money to Conservancy and I'm sure they are doing great work, it is not the only option and maybe we even need to consider a combination of different options to have the maximum probability of success in the long term. One solution that comes to mind is for debian.ch (which is incorporated as an association under Swiss law) to apply for an insurance policy such as this one and for developers who like this idea to grant or assign their copyright to debian.ch. Another option is for Conservancy to work with some insurance companies like this rather than trying to fund the legal costs from donations. Then the money that people do donate to Conservancy could be used for other purposes. Yet another solution may be for Debian or Conservancy to negotiate with an insurance company to get insurance policies designed for free software developers. Then developers can buy the insurance personally. One limitation of legal insurance is the waiting period (90 days from policy commencement). If anybody discovers and publicizes another abuse of copyright / GPL before the insurance has been purchased and the 90 days passed, the insurer may not accept the case. 1. http://paste.debian.net/plain/340540
