Issue #5 - Please explain the topic of each mailing list

[Peter Cock]

On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 1:51 AM, Filipus Klutiero <chealer at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2016-10-08 15:42, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>
>> On 10/08/2016 09:38 AM, Filipus Klutiero wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Martin,
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Thank you
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> spi-board is a list of the board of directors to communicate. It's
>>>> also used as a contact address for the board.
>>>
>>>
>>> OK, but in terms of content, what discussions would be more appropriate
>>> to direct to spi-board than to, I guess, spi-general?
>>
>>
>> Anything that is confidential. For example, a potential legal issue.
>
> Why would a potential legal issue be confidential?

I would have thought legal issues should be private by default.
e.g. Project X has noticed company Y appears to be using their
software in breach of license and wants advice and legal assistance.
Going public with allegations might be good strategy, but personally
I would want to discuss this situation with lawyers privately first.

As an example of a legal issue which could be public, I asked
on behalf of Biopython (part of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation
umbrella) about *getting* legal advice on changing our open source
licence. SPI referred us to the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC).

Regards,

Peter

P.S. I also support clearer labelling of the topic and intended
usage of each SPI mailing list - even having been subscribed
to some for a while now, this was and is not obvious to me.