legal protection (was: Role of incubator)

[Greg Stein <gs...@lyra.org>]

On Sun, Jan 05, 2003 at 04:03:43AM -0800, Justin Erenkrantz wrote:
>...
> For example, I believe that Tomcat should certainly have its own PMC. 
> There is no reason to believe that the Tomcat committers themselves 
> can't be legally responsible for the project and its management.  In 
> fact, IIRC, according to Roy, only actions by PMC members will be 
> protected by the ASF.  Actions by committers may not be protected. 
> Therefore, under this interpretation, the bulk of the Jakarta 
> participants aren't covered by the protection of the ASF.  How many 
> people involved in Jakarta projects realize this?  (It was brought up 
> on the reorg@ list and it didn't seem to matter to some.)

Actually, the ASF is required to provide protection *only* to the following
people: directors, officers, and members. That definitely leaves out
committers, and it even leaves out PMC members who aren't members or the
Chair. The ASF will certainly try to assist the PMC members, but is
(actually) not obligated to do so.

IOW, we'll do what we can to protect the code and some of the people, but if
you want to shift any personal legal liability to the ASF, then your goal is
to become a member.

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/