Legal entity

[Matthew East]

Hi,

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 11:01 PM, Søren Bredlund Caspersen
<soeren.b.c at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> in the Danish LoCo team we are currently considering the possibility
> of forming a 'formal' association, which would be a legal entity. This
> would be done to enable the team to administrate money to pay for
> posters, rent locations for release parties and so on.
>
> However some have mentioned that Canonical might have a problem with
> this from a legal point of view (trademarks, etc.). So can someone
> 'official' (Jono Bacon?) confirm or deny that?

I'll copy in Jono for his comments. I believe that Ubuntu as a project
and Canonical has traditionally discouraged the forming of legal
entities for local teams. Although the point hasn't been extensively
discussed by the Community Council, I also take the view that legal
incorporation should be an absolute last resort for local teams (i.e.
it should only be done if clear legal advice is that it is mandatory
for the group to perform its ordinary tasks).

This will be one of the key early issues for the Loco Council to
resolve, together with the Community Council and probably Canonical
too, and I wouldn't advise people to rely on short comments made
during Open Week.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF