[awards-program] Rules Question: "Sponsor"

[Bonnie Corwin]

Hi,

Teresa and I discussed this issue yesterday with the lawyers.

Note that the current draft of the Rules I received yesterday says:

"16. SPONSOR: The Sponsor of this Contest is the OpenSolaris Community 
at www.opensolaris.org.  Sun Microsystems, Inc., is funding all of the 
prize awards, however, Sun Microsystems shall have no liability or 
responsibility in connection with the Contest other than to fund the 
prize awards specified herein."

Usually, a contest is funded and run by the same entity.  But in this 
case, Sun is funding prizes and leaving the individual communities to 
run/manage the programs.  The term Sponsor is used throughout the Rules 
to define management of the project: the Sponsor can disqualify entries, 
decide not to pay out prizes, etc.

We can't use the wording noted above because our constitution defines 
the "OpenSolaris community" and outlines processes for how that 
community makes decision, and that community has not voted to Sponsor 
this contest.

I think the best idea is to change the first sentence above to:

"The Sponsor of this contest is the XXX Project in the Advocacy 
Community Group on www.opensolaris.org."

But that means we need a project.  Jim, is it possible to initiate a 
Project really quickly to manage the contest (since we're supposed to 
announce the rules on Monday)?

Thanks.

Bonnie


Jim Grisanzio wrote:
> hey,
> 
> Is it too late to make changes to the rules? I'm confused by the word 
> "Sponsor" and how it is defined in Section 18:
> 
> 
>>SPONSOR: The Sponsor of this Contest is [insert full name an address.] 
>>[You may just fill
>>in the name of your community and the site address.] the OpenSolaris 
>>community,
>>www.opensolaris.org . The OpenSolaris community does not have a 
>>physical address.
>>Can we just put the website? YES Sun Microsystems, Inc., however, is 
>>funding all of the
>>prize awards.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure this works well. This is how I see it. Sun Microsystems is 
> funding the contest, so legally it would seem to me that the company is 
> the "Sponsor" of the contest and ultimately responsible. In other words, 
> if there are problems, people will go to Sun, not the OpenSolaris 
> community. The community, after all, has no legal standing since it's 
> not a company or a foundation. However,  Teresa used the word 
> "Administrator" in the meeting today to articulate the community's role 
> in all this, and I think that works much better than Sponsor. And I 
> think that positioning is consistent with how OpenSolaris operates as 
> well. After all, Sun is funding the OpenSolaris project on 
> opensolaris.org in terms of releasing the code, providing infrastructure 
> and people, etc, to enable a community of developers to form and run the 
> operations of the project.
> 
> Sun's press release is quite clear that this contest is ultimately a 
> "Sun" program:
> 
> 
>>Sun Announces Open Source Community Innovation Awards Program
>>http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-12/sunflash.20071205.1.xml
>>
>>SANTA CLARA, CA December 5, 2007 Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: JAVA), 
>>today announced a multi-year program called the Open Source Community 
>>Innovation Awards Program, which will foster innovation and recognize 
>>some of the most interesting initiatives within Sun-sponsored open 
>>source communities worldwide. To participate in the program's first 
>>year, Sun has selected six communities: GlassFish, NetBeans, OpenJDK, 
>>OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris and OpenSPARC. Prizes are expected to 
>>total at least $1 million (USD) a year.
> 
> 
> That says Sun all over it. And for good reason. However, in the next 
> paragraph it states this:
> 
> 
>>Beginning in mid-January 2008, Sun and the six open source communities 
>>will announce details on how developers can participate in the 
>>individual programs. Each community will have its own contest rules 
>>and judging criteria. Prize winners will be announced in August 2008.
> 
> 
> Now the "communities" come in. What that says to me is that Sun is 
> providing the cash, the legal framework, and all the infrastructure for 
> a contest to exist and asking the community to actually run the contest 
> from an operational perspective. That's how it all becomes a joint 
> Sun-community project. And that sounds perfectly reasonable to me, and 
> it's consistent with how the Sun-sponsored open source communities are 
> run. So, to clarify the rules, here's a suggested change to Section 18:
> 
> 
>>SPONSOR and ADMINISTRATOR: The Sponsor of this Contest is Sun 
>>Microsystems, Inc. The Administrator of this Contest is the 
>>OpenSolaris community. Sun has delegated to the OpenSolaris community 
>>on opensolaris.org the task of specifying and implementing the 
>>Contest, and those activities are taking place in the open within the 
>>OpenSolaris Advocacy Community Group.
> 
> Something like that ...
> 
> Jim
>