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