On 4/12/08, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 11/04/2008, Casey Brown cbrown1023.ml@gmail.com wrote:
Isn't the general disclaimer a local thing rather than a global one? I think this is a matter for the individual communities, not the Foundation.
It's a legal matter, so it probably does fall on the foundation.
To the best of my knowledge, the foundation has not created any of the existing disclaimers or dictated their contents. That makes them entirely community products, subject to the same process as any other wiki page. I'll defer to our lawyer if he thinks it should be otherwise, but that's how I understand the situation.
--Michael Snow
If memory serves, there have been situations when stuff analogous to the disclaimers has gone at least mildly - but sufficiently in any case - awry, for the foundation to take interest in their goings on, but as far as recall (and I wouldn't trust my memory further than I can throw it :-), in each case it wasn't a situation of the foundation pouncing on the project, but use of roundabout, gentle suasion, very low key.
Trusting each community to be sensible about things and explaining things from the general mission point of view to them. In general, personally I think the foundation can afford to talk softly, and not really even measure how big their stick is.
The question of what the legal status of those documents is I think should remain as unstated as possible. I think they are communication to the reader, which is intended to be the people who do the work in the communities, making sure there are as few as possible avenues for our readers to believe there is some thing they are entitled to, implicitly or not, which they should not feel entitled to, nor for their own benefit make a mistake about what we really are.
But if The Foundations lawyer feels a compelling need to spell out precisely what the disclaimer status is and thus take the disclaimers explicitly under its aegis, or completely distance itself from them; I certainly cannot argue with that. It would surprise me though.
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]