Re: [DotGNU]Protection from legal harassment (was Re: DotGNU and business)

[Peter Minten]

Norbert Bollow wrote:
> 
> Besides hoping to get protection from an organisation with "one
> body rule methodology" (yes, one of the things that
> FreeDevelopers had promised was to give us is this protection),
> there's another way of protecting yourself:
> 
> Look at what Rhys has done.
> 
> He has set up a company called "Southern Storm Software, Pty
> Ltd" which has a single employee (Rhys).  From a legal
> perspective, DotGNU Portable.NET is not produced by Rhys, but
> rather by this company.  This makes it much more difficult to
> personally harass Rhys through lawsuits of any kind.
> 
> Only the truly paranoid would think that this kind of protection
> is necessary also for small-time contributors to Free Software
> projects.  But if you're planning to do something of true
> significance (and from your earlier comments about "network
> operating system" stuff I think this may be the case) then I'll
> strongly recommend that you should set up such a
> "self-incorporation".

I don't know about the requirments in other parts of the world for setting up a
corporate body (to give the owners legal protection) but here in the Netherlands
you need a 2 or more persons to set up the stuff and I believe there were some
other requirments. Wouldn't it be best to provide a DotGNU corporation for this
stuff (the folks needing legal protection would probably qualify as employees
anyway) since some of us might not be able to start a corporation? I know
bizplan died, but with FreeDevelopers going down it could be useful to give the
concept another try.

Greetings,

Peter