Individual ownership certainly doesn't, which is why larger communities develop processes for handling disputes. But this still doesn't require any form of legal framework. Will any open source community become sufficiently large that it has effective ownership of an entire domain such that there's significant social pressure to organise it along more formal lines? It's not impossible, but in cases where that has happened (eg, professional medical associations) they've ended up being willing to eject members for behaviour outside that community, so the same problems have to be considered anyway.
You know perfectly well that it's a commercial entity, that they defend their private turf, and that they will only let you have an influence if it's on their terms
Of course, but that has nothing to do with any kind of legal structure they have. There's no contractual relationship between Canonical and a community member who engages in no way other than to participate in mailing list and IRC discussion, but Canonical remain free to ban that member.
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Re: "Discipline"? "Members"? What kind of "community" are you talking about?
Date: 2017-12-22 11:45 am (UTC)Individual ownership certainly doesn't, which is why larger communities develop processes for handling disputes. But this still doesn't require any form of legal framework. Will any open source community become sufficiently large that it has effective ownership of an entire domain such that there's significant social pressure to organise it along more formal lines? It's not impossible, but in cases where that has happened (eg, professional medical associations) they've ended up being willing to eject members for behaviour outside that community, so the same problems have to be considered anyway.
Of course, but that has nothing to do with any kind of legal structure they have. There's no contractual relationship between Canonical and a community member who engages in no way other than to participate in mailing list and IRC discussion, but Canonical remain free to ban that member.