[foundation-board] Revised Omidyar grant agreement

Wed Sep 7 11:40:03 UTC 2011

On 7 September 2011 10:17, Ben Laurie <ben at links.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Jordan S Hatcher
> <jordan at opencontentlawyer.com> wrote:
>> I'm generally happy with the changes.  I'd like to note a few things for the board's specific attention:
>>
>> * there are specific rules around our publicity of Omidyar and use of their trademarks, including getting pre-clearance for use and publicising the grant at Section 15. Not a huge deal, but it means that we need to be aware of this operationally.
>>
>> * we must comply with US trade sanctions when we spend Omidyar money. As practical examples, I take this to mean that for example we will have to carefullly consider: (1) employing, sponsoring, or giving travel funding to nationals of any of the sanctioned states (2) setting up programs that involve any of those sanctioned states.  Examples of the latter could be, an "Open Government Data Iran" or an OKF North Korea.  Some examples might be unlikely, but others, such as having a Cuban attend an event and ask for travel funding, might not be.
>>
>> <http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Pages/Programs.aspx>
>>
>> * We cannot spend these funds in the US or use it to set up a US chapter without going through some significant hoops.
>
> Are these conditions sticky? That is, if we develop some s/w using
> their money are we then forbidden forever from using them as above?

Good question Ben though, in general, we don't plan to use this money
for software development. Moreover, we would not actually be "(1)
employing, sponsoring, or giving travel funding to nationals of any of
the sanctioned states (2) setting up programs that involve any of
those sanctioned states" (if persons from sanctioned states happened
to use software we had developed at a later stage I can't imagine that
would be an issue).

Rufus