To be clear, Tracy's use of "customers" and "clients" was in the
generic sense of potential customers and the issue with not
having a "legal entity" to represent OpenACS has more to do with
having an organization that can make representations about the intellectual property, can be assigned copyright, etc. It has little to
do with risks relating to support,alternate vendors of services, or our looking to OpenACS as an organization to provide such things
for current clients.
Issues around IP rights are raised by lawyers on the client's
side in almost every contract and we have negotiated a lot of
development contracts at this point. It is often the
most difficult point to resolve and our point is that
an OpenACS foundation might help resolve such issues more
easily.
