Re: Tee-Shirt Contest & Countries Eligibility

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org>]

On 11/17/10 13:20, Tristan Van Berkom wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 2:48 AM, Baptiste Mille-Mathias
> <baptiste millemathias gmail com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I've seen the foundation will organize a contest to design a tee-shirt
>> for the GNOME 3 release [1], and while reading the terms of the rules
>> [2], I found the first part of paragraph 4 particularly unfair to
>> people living in some countries.
>> GNOME being based on people and openness, I wonder how a Free Software
>> & Non-profit organisation wouldcomply with such US embargo related
>> laws.
>> How it could make sense to refuse a proposal for a contest, but coding
>> contribution and translations are accepted everyday?
>>
>> If there's no way around such restrictions, could it be possible for
>> the foundation to look for some way to avoid them in the future (by
>> creating a delegation in another country perhaps) ?
> 
> For what it's worth, motion strongly seconded.

For what it's worth, GNOME pretty much ignores such regulations in all its
other dealings.  Doesn't necessarily mean that it's violating any law.  It
just doesn't bother checking.  Doing it for such a small contest sounds
overkill to me.

behdad


> These rules sound outright offensive to residents of some countries,
> furthermore they make the GNOME foundation publicly appear to be
> actively supporting US embargo laws.
> 
> If it's impossible to change the rules for the term of this contest, we should
> at least include a statement at http://www.gnome.org/contest/ explaining
> why we are bound by law etc, etc, to enforce these particular biased rules...
> and hopefully promising to do better the next time around.
> 
> Best regards,
>      -Tristan