Re: Call for OPW project ideas

[Karen Sandler <karen punkrocklawyer com>]

On 2014-11-09 20:23, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
> On Sun, 2014-11-09 at 18:48 +0000, Magdalen Berns wrote:
> The challenges the OPW organisers face is in figuring out how to
> encourage projects and mentors to sign up and yet also protect GNOME
> from a potential lawsuit in the event that things go horribly wrong as
> a result of something that may not be GNOME's fault.
>
> I don't see much of a challenge. The wording under question is:
>
> "For only situations arising out of your gross negligence, recklessness
> or intentional wrongdoing, you shall indemnify, defend, and hold
> harmless GNOME, its officers, directors, and employees from any and all
> claims, demands, damages, costs and liabilities, including reasonable
> attorneys’ fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your
> participation in the Program; your Mentoring Activities (including
> correspondence with the Participant or Participants, and modification 
> of
> any Participant’s source code or written materials); or your violation
> of this Agreement."
>
> This is really mundane: I agreed to a more restrictive indemnification
> than this by simply reading CNN.com today. So has anybody who's ever
> used Skype, or Flash, or Facebook. (Seriously, check the ToS of 
> Facebook
> or CNN, the two I bothered to check; they're very similar and include
> the provision about attorneys' fees.) Or the Internet, really; I'm
> surprised I didn't have to agree to indemnify my ISP, though maybe that
> was part of my contract and I just forgot. Anybody can sue anybody for
> anything, and I highly doubt being an OPW mentor will increase the
> likelihood of my ending up in court.

Thanks Michael.

We very much tried to limit the contracts as much as possible, to figure 
out how to set up the infrastructure to host the program without unduly 
burdening the intern and mentor contracts only have indemnities 
triggered for "gross negligence, recklessness or intentional 
wrongdoing", as discussed in the previous thread (this is actually a 
pretty high bar). Not only do I think that this legal infrastructure is 
necessary in order for the Foundation to host the program, but some 
funders also require that it be in place.

karen

> See also:
> https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2014-September/msg00120.html
>
> I'll be getting back to my code now.
>
> Michael
>
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