From: Solomon Peachy via rockbox-dev <rockbox-dev_at_cool.haxx.se>
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2020 19:31:30 -0400

On Sun, Oct 04, 2020 at 03:00:50PM +0100, Sam Kuper via rockbox-dev wrote:
> - limited personal liability protection for project leaders;
> - legal advice;

I'd like to point out that this is a very real concern. What sorts of
legal issues could Rockbox face? Here's what comes to mind. It's probably
nowhere near comprehensive:

 * DMCA anti-circumvention violations (we sorta "jailbreak" player hardware)
 * Patent infringement (lots of litigous codec folks out there!)
 * GPDR-related insanity
 * Companies that think reverse engineering is just a fancy term that means
   "you stole our secret intellectual property"
 * Copyright infringement from mis-contributed source code
 * Takedown requests for forum, wiki, or other hosted content
 * Someone objecting to nominally-legal content posted on the wiki or forums
 * Anything involving [mis]use of donated funds
 * Professional trolls and other meanies

Keep in mind that there is no "Rockbox" legal entity, so "Rockbox"
actually means means individual developers/contributors -- and as the
one who's currently hosting the infrastructure and is perhaps the
highest-profile current developer (I do talk a lot, heh..) if a legal
axe is swung at Rockbox, I'm going to be the first one hit. Even if
it's a completely baseless accusation, fighting it is certain to prove
ruinously expensive.

This isn't to say that being a member project of the SFC (or whomever)
will make these risks magically go away, but if something bad does
transpire, at least we'd have someone in our corner of the ring.

 - Solomon

-- 
Solomon Peachy			      pizza at shaftnet dot org (email&xmpp)
                                      _at_pizza:shaftnet dot org   (matrix)
High Springs, FL                      speachy (freenode)

Received on 2020-10-04