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

[Timothy Rue]

On 11-Jul-02 12:27:26 Peter Minten <address@hidden> wrote:
 PM> 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".

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

Perhaps this is something of a GNU business focus project to create.
Where the general project description and goal is set and those in teh
variosu countries and laws can check on and collect the required
information in to the project. I guess it would be a something of a GNU
GPL Document type of project??? Would Lawrence Lessig be interested in
contributing or acting in some capacity here?

I'm also thinking www.pubsoft.org type of assistant involved in a process
that might include this sort of "protection" project of reference to it.

---
Timothy Rue
Email @ mailto:address@hidden
Web @ http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/