Reminder: Do not use trademarks in Summary or Description

Tom "spot" Callaway tcallawa at redhat.com
Sat Jan 31 19:35:31 UTC 2009


On 2009-01-31 at 9:38:08 -0500, "Joshua C." <joshuacov at googlemail.com>
wrote:
> Unfortunately
> because of the fact that the legal Guardian of the Fedora project is
> bound by the US laws we should comply with these, too.
> Maybe Paul W. Frields should take the next step and make the project
> "completely" independant (this is my personal opinion).

We've been down this road a few times before, but there are serious
logistical problems. If Fedora was a US non-profit entity, that entity
would still have to comply with US laws (not to mention the financial
issues around where the majority of Fedora's funding comes from).

Even if Fedora incorporated as a separate entity in a legal no-mans-land
(like say, the Isle of Man *cough, cough, cough*), they would be passing
the risk onto US mirrors and users.

I'm of the opinion that Fedora raises awareness of the issues that
stifle innovation, both in the US and worldwide. There are options for
individuals who are not bound by such laws (or who choose to be
conscientious objectors). By playing by "the rules" we set a foundation
for being able to document how broken laws are making developers and
users suffer, and present that material as briefs in cases in In re Bilski:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080409033837121

If you're completely uninterested in trying to fix the system as a
participant, there are other distributions which don't care about legal
issues. I'm proud that Fedora does its best to protect not just itself,
but also its users from legal risk.

~spot




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