Charters, manifestos, and SPI's purpose, and forum-widening

[Jimmy Kaplowitz]

Hi Bruce,

On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 10:24:21AM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote:
> I researched copyright/patent liability insurance for a commercial 
> customer a while back. It can be had for 1.5 to 2.5 percent of the 
> insured amount per year. If you want $1 Million coverage you will be 
> paying $15,000 to $25,000 per year.
> 
> But the member is not the insured party. The corporation is. I don't 
> think it works for the corporation to indemnify a member the way this 
> insurance might have helped a company indemnify a customer. This brings 
> us back to the same point. If we can establish rules by which the 
> developer is working on behalf of the corporation, they can:

Is it not possible to have the policy written to cover a defined other
group of people besides the corporation itself, such as those who are
official DDs (a very well-defined set)? Note I am not commenting right
now on whether I think this would be worthwhile for Debian or for any of
the other projects, but I don't see a priori why such a policy
(admittedly somewhat atypical) couldn't be arranged if desired by SPI or
a member project. Certainly Directors & Officers insurance is one kind
of insurance that is purchased by a company for specific individuals,
and I don't see what's unique about that other than a different risk
profile that makes it a reasonably common purchase.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy at spi-inc.org