[Consortium] Linuxaudio.org Management Board

[Daniel James]

Hello all,

I believe we need to convene a meeting (on-line) of the linuxaudio.org 
management board. The issue has come up that some companies and 
organisations seem unable to join the consortium because of clause 6 
in the policy document.

It reads:

"Members of the Linuxaudio.org consortium agree not to sue other 
members, or otherwise instigate prosecutions of members, following a 
dispute over reverse engineering."

http://linuxaudio.org/en/policy.html

I don't think it's that these companies want to sue developers - it's 
just that they are unable to promise not to sue. I'd like to see the 
management board address the question of whether this clause is worth 
keeping, and if so whether it's more important than wider membership.

Two companies have explicitly stated that this clause is the reason 
why they cannot join the consortium. One university department has 
said that it cannot commit to agreements of this nature on behalf of 
the entire institution, and therefore cannot join either. It seems 
likely that other companies and organisations may also be prevented 
from joining by this clause.

The current members of the management board are:

Dave Phillips (Chair)
Patrick Shirkey (Boost Hardware)
Christian Schaller (GStreamer)
Jan Depner (JAMin)
Ron Parker (Mirror Image)
Steve Harris (plugin.org.uk)

Linuxaudio.org participants who have not yet nominated a 
representative:

AGNULA
ALSA
Ardour
Audacity
Core Sound
dyne:bolic
Fervent Software
4Front Technologies
JACK
Linux Audio Systems
Lionstracs
Mandrakesoft
Rosegarden

Naturally, we can only have one person representing each project or 
company, otherwise there could be problems with multiple votes. 
Management board discussions are intended to take place on a 
dedicated mailing list:

http://lists.linuxaudio.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/management

The list has public archives but membership is open only to board 
members. (As linuxaudio.org director, I am subscribed for information 
purposes, but of course I have no vote in management decisions).

If those projects who have not yet nominated a representative would 
like to do so, I can add those people to the management board mailing 
list. They can also subscribe themselves, but the subscription will 
still have to be approved by the list admins (myself and Andrea 
Glorioso of the Agnula project).

Cheers

Daniel James
Director
http://linuxaudio.org