SME Server:Constitution:Business Agent Requirements

Business Agent Requirements

Business Agent

This person will lead the Administrative Group and will assume responsibility for the business affairs of the SME community.

This person shall serve as Chairman of the Board of SME Server Inc.

The duties of this position include:

• Act as the agent for the community when legal documents must be completed / signed.
• Oversee or delegate the completion of any tax and / or corporate documents as required by law.
• Collect and present the legal, business and other relevant concerns / issues of the other group leaders and present them to the Corporate Steward (via the Liaison) for resolution.
• Document and file any correspondence, vote / polling results, internal communications and approvals or any other document needed to document, record and prove valid procedural processes have been followed in the conduct of our business affairs.
• The Business Agent may create the posts of Administrative Leader (AL) as needed to offload tasks and delegate responsibility for different functions as needed due to time and workload issues.
• This delegation may include financial activities, reporting, disbursement of funds, etc.

The Business Agent shall be responsible for monitoring license compliance for the community, ensuring both that the community adheres to the provisions of the licenses of the software that we use, and that any licenses applied to software created by community members are enforced.

The BA shall create a license enforcement team to carry out this directive.

The team will broadly ensure that any material on the community website or in the community software distribution channels that is involved in any licensing or other IP dispute is promptly withdrawn.

The material shall be withheld from the community until a resolution is reached that either allows its publication or mandates its deletion or modification.

All community volunteers and members have a duty to make such issues known to the BA promptly so that legal problems can be avoided.

The BA is given the authority to direct the CM and/or DM to remove the specified materials immediately.

The BA will also function as the liaison with other external entities to promptly resolve these issues.

The team will:

• Maintain a list of the licenses for all packages used in the SME Server OS.
• Monitor these packages for compliance, and for any license changes by the originator or packager.
• Maintain list of appropriate places within the SME Server distribution for copyright assertions.
• Work with any individual who contributes to SME Server to ensure that any code has a copyright notice in the appropriate place(s).
• Monitor any re releases from other groups for the appropriate copyright notices
• Respond as quickly as possible to any license disputes.
• Fully document any processes, contacts, procedures, etc., used for this purpose.
• Engage the copyright holder as required to ensure complete understanding of the license(s) in question and arrange for the possibility of any enforcement action.
• Contact any organization that is deemed to be in violation of our licenses, and work with them to achieve compliance.
• Engage the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as required to address any questions concerning licensing, and to investigate any enforcement actions that may become necessary.
• Assemble all documents, contacts, test results, etc., prior to contacting the FSF, and follow the process(es) they have created for this purpose.
• Contact any appropriate organizations to bring our licensing disputes into the public arena.

It is the specific intent of this section of the constitution to require that the SME Server community operate and remain in the strictest compliance with the licenses of others, and to attempt to resolve any dispute as quickly and amicably as possible. In particular, any enforcement actions or public notices of perceived license violations shall only occur after a thorough study of the issues involved, appropriate advice has been gathered, and multiple attempts to resolve any issue have failed.

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