Re: Migration of dia-list to GNOME Discourse instance

[Steve Litt <slitt troubleshooters com>]

On Tue, 20 Oct 2020 15:56:27 +0100
Zander Brown <zbrown gnome org> wrote:

> On Tue, 2020-10-20 at 07:52 -0400, rhkramer--- via dia-list wrote:
> > On Tuesday, October 20, 2020 02:52:23 AM Steve Litt wrote:  
> > > I can't imagine anything friendlier than email. It comes to you,
> > > you read it, you reply. No need to join yet another third party,
> > > no need to read and agree to yet another legal contract, many of
> > > which have "take your house" indemnification clauses.  
> >
> > +1  
>
> Being a bit pedantic: There is no additional party here, GNOME
> Discourse is hosted on the same infrastructure as mailman (and
> managed by the same sysadmin team)
>
> GNOME has a common Privacy Policy/CoC for both, IIRC the GNOME
> Discourse ToS is fairly short and standard

I quote from the TOS:

======================================================================
16. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless GNOME, its contractors, and
its licensors, and their respective directors, officers, employees and
agents from and against any and all claims and expenses, including
attorneys’ fees, arising out of your use of the Website, including but
not limited to your violation of this Agreement.
======================================================================

So if some crazy guy doesn't like what you say, and sues Gnome for a
million dollars, even though what you said was perfectly OK, it isn't
Google's problem, it's yours. The lawsuit is based on Gnome's deep
pockets, but the guy paying the bills is you. The TOS is unclear as to
whether Gnome can just pay the guy $100K to avoid the nuisance, at
which time *you'll* pay the $100K, but that's a feature of many
indemnification clauses. To repeat, an indemnification clause is NOT an
agreement not to sue them, which would be bad enough if they were
negligent; it's an agreement that if any third party sues Gnome
alleging anything involving your use of the Gnome facility, you're
financially responsible.

Now it could be argued that if you're in the wrong, Gnome shouldn't
pay. True enough. But even without an indemnification clause, Gnome
could sue you, if the third party suit has merit. What an
indemnification clause really does is use you as an unpaid insurance
policy for Gnome, and although it's rare, people lose their houses over
indemnification clauses.

It could be argued that these days you have to sign some
indemnification clause laden contracts. But that doesn't mean that you
sign any and all such contracts. Especially just so you can get the hip
new thing.

Section 12 says your indemnity basically lasts forever. So it's
conceivable that years after you've quit Gnome Discourse, someone could
file a meritless lawsuit against Gnome, and then you pay.

> So really the only difference in terms of joining the "list" is the
> need to pick a username/handle, and that your email address is
> private by default

Cough cough Indemnification.
 
SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2020 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/thrive