[Foundation-l] Update of Foundation organization

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 3/5/07, Florence Devouard <anthere at anthere.org> wrote:
[snip]
> * we wish to involve people from all over the world, not restricting
> employees to USA only. Currently, those working "offshore" have to be
> their own employers (they are contractants). This is not sustainable in
> the long run, so we have to explore more international employment issues.
[snip]

First off, I'm terrified to raise this point in public because I know
that there are people here who will scream that I'm some kind of
nationalist bigot for bringing this up. But I think it's a very
serious matter which demands the input and understanding of a wide
audience.

It is my understanding that if we have true employees in a nation that
our organization will have a legal presence in that nation. If we have
a legal presence in that nation, we will be subject to the
jurisdiction of that nation.

It would be ideal that our activities would generally be so far away
from the ambiguous grey areas of the law that the differing legal
behavior would not be a substantial issue for us. However, this just
isn't the case today. We benefit substantially from detailed aspects
of US law in the areas of libel, copyright, and privacy.

*Does operating the foundation with regular employees in a nation
create a jurisdictional issue as I described?
*How can we avoid this risk while maintaining the agility to hire
useful people from any part of the world?
*What are the qualities and risks of various jurisdictions?
*How can we deal with the impact of being subject to multiple jurisdictions?

I fear that in the worst case being directly subject to the laws of
many nations we may find our entire method of operation (open access
Wikis) to be too risky.