Re: SPI Workshop/Brainstorming Session at Debconf

On Tue, 2003-07-22 at 06:41, Josip Rodin wrote:
> But Fresco has _nothing_ to do with Debian. I don't remember if it's even
> packaged. Fresco is being hosted by SPI and SPI only. In addition to that,
> I don't believe they transferred any copyrights or trademarks to SPI so SPI
> isn't obliged to use any money (especially not Debian's money) to defend
> them in court.

So, then, what is our mission? Does "SPI hosted" just mean web hosting?
Is it a productive use of all of our time to build an organization that
provides "free" web hosting for Open Source projects? Isn't that
SourceForge? Who will provides the bandwidth for these downloads? I will
note that Purcel (which provides Fresco with its web space) is hosted by
my company at my expense. I'm friends with Graydon Hoare so I'd host
Fresco anyway, but I'd like a Brainfood button on the page or something.

Purcel is just another resouce that was given to SPI because of Debian.
The fact that Fresco is only a small draw on borrowed Debian resources
doesn't really make your point effectively. SPI clearly isn't fulfilling
its mission in Fresco's case. We should be doing much more for them or
we don't have a very compelling reason to exist.

If we have a project that really uses our services and we are drawn into
a legal action and the courts make a judgement against us then we better
have Debian behind the decisions that drew us into court. Our
disorganized accounting saying "this money is Debian's" is probably not
going to diminish our liability. The board is almost all Debianers, the
membership is mostly Debianers, so the court is probably going to decide
that the responsibility (and the cost) belong to Debian. I'll run this
by Chris Rourk to verify my thinking.

--
_____________________________________________________________________
Ean Schuessler ean(at)brainfood(dot)com
Brainfood, Inc. http://www.brainfood.com