On Thu, Jul 02, 2009 at 02:56:07PM +0000, James Bottomley wrote: > 3. For this patch, since there are legal issues which could harm > the defence of any company to be discussed openly, the LF is > paying the retainer for John Lanza to be available to any member > of the community on a one on one basis, so that the discussions > they engage in would be protected by client privilege (i.e. not > subject to discovery). I believe what has been made available is that people who have some detailed legal questions can contact John Lanza who can either respond off-line via e-mail, schedule time for a phone call, and if really necessary, it _can_ be possible to establish a formal client/attorney privilege with John. These different options are listed in order of increasing cost to the Linux Foundation. Which option gets chosen will depend on the specific question and who is asking the question; which is to say, setting up a formal client/attorney privilege might be more appropriate for Hirofumi or Linus, but obviously the LF can't afford to set up relationships where client privilege would apply for any random LKML reader who is randomly curious about the way things work. So just to make it clear, with respect to expectations, simply sending e-mail to John doesn't automatically set up a client relationship that which protects the discussion under client/attorney privilege. Setting that up *does* cost LF real money, so I would ask folks to be considerate about the LF's resources! BTW, Tridge has offered to be available for phone conversations, since he's probably asked the various lawyers that have been consulted most of the questions that people might have; so that's another option for people who have legal questions that would be kinder and gentler to the LF's budget. And of course, keep in mind that this offer is really only for people who want to clarification of any background legal issues, not to debate the issue of whether or not the patch should go in. That policy discussion should happen openly, like any other proposed patch, and ultimately it's Hirofumi-san's and/or Linus's call. - Ted -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
