List of things we'd like some Legal aid with:
Portions of this software were developed by various contributors, who retain copyright on their work. These works are licensed to Phacility, Inc.
| Status | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resolved | avivey | T15023 Create Phorge, a fork of Phabricator | ||
| Open | None | T15022 Legal stuff |
This ties into T15009: Foundation - the majority of foundations for open source will support retaining assets like trademarks/copyrights. It would also be useful if they assist in acquiring them in the first place.
Just to add clarification around T15009: Foundation, we can opt to create our own organization instead of joining an existing foundation however that involves a lot more paperwork, submissions, legal stuff, etc. The foundations are a means for speeding along that process, where Apache Foundation, Linux Foundation, etc. create their own non-profit organizational legal entity then "adopt" sub-projects which automatically inherit and become part of their entity as long as we abide by their agreements, largely focused around providing open source projects run by open source communities. In turn they provide benefits like being the actual legal entity that owns the trademarks/copyrights/assets for the project, some even offer to be owner of domain names etc. along with providing some legal assistance for e.g. open source license law or even for initially acquiring trademarks/copyrights.
If we decide to join one of those foundations instead of creating our own that will give us a boost with a number of legal things related to assets and donations etc.. One of my concerns is what the process is for the project leaving the foundation. For example in the case of Apache Foundation I don't think that's an option as AF takes on the project as their own and only they can decide to release the project again -- ultimately if we have a disagreement with AF we would be forced to re-fork and re-brand under different legal entity.
My thinking was that we would start with a foundation for now so we don't get too caught up in creating an official organization, but I would definitely like to leave it open in the future to becoming our own organization separate from a foundation. This is why I'm currently leaning towards Linux Foundation or Software Freedom Conservancy as I believe those allow the project to split off later.