[nc-budget] Motivations and Explanations

[Elisabeth Porteneuve <Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr>]

What to do ?
Maybe speaking or writing could help ?

1. Re: voting software.

Sometimes my perception is that some of you think I want 
to make money from the DNSO on my voting software, and 
consequently I am targeted as if I were rich and powerful.
Furthermore, my company, a not for profit organization
is unpaid since months, and put fiscaly in danger.

It is not my intention to make money from the DNSO.

I wrote the software in 1996, in France, to answer a specific 
need of a community of circa two hundred persons, and because 
I liked to do it. (Neither AFNIC, nor ICANN existed in 1996.)
I know all its defects and possible 
improvements, the part which is painfully manual, and the part 
which could be better. I know it does not scale. I know there 
is no decent manual, it was not written for anybody else that 
me to use it, and because writing manuals is extremely time 
consuming. With all the above it fits the DNSO needs today, 
as it did since 1999. Because this software is mine, I may show 
how the algorithm goes, and publish records which go beyond 
the result itself - to be generous and make understand voting 
mechanism better. 

Knowing all the above, I want to grant the rights to use it to 
the DNSO Names Council. The US terminology is "licensing". 
The DNSO may use it as long as it is agreeable to them. 
It is as it is, no guarantee, no lessons of math, as it is.

I cannot grant more. In no way I could accept that when I give 
the rights to use a software, as a result I may put my life and 
my children's one in danger of being sued, and demanded to give 
more, to have strings attached.
I do not want to make money from the DNSO. My point is I do 
not want to loose my home and my money with a gift I made.

I know that the French contract, as drafted by my lawyer, 
will protect me and my children against those who consider 
that this offered software as it is gives them rights to demand 
me more and more, over and over again.

2. Re: dnso.org website

The dnso.org website is in France and benefits from the 
French law with regards to the IP rights. Each and every 
contribution on the dnso.org belongs to its author. From 
practical standpoint it means that for example, nobody 
may publish a book quoting documents from the dnso.org 
without asking authors for their approval. 
The custodianship of the dnso.org website is the responsibility 
towards each and every author. 
I am very happy to see that ICANN as the legal agent, 
acting on behalf of the DNSO, will protect all the IP rights 
attached to the dnso.org website, and contribute
to its long term.
With my experience on space programs I must say that 
the preservation of data on the long term is a difficult 
task, sometimes quite expensive (the disks change, the formats 
change, the operating systems change, the staff gets retired ... 
it is all but simple to read ten years old data).

Again, I do not claim any special rights to the dnso.org,
I was the one who tried to keep the website organized.
My motivations today is responsibility and respect of IP 
rights of those who wrote texts put on the dnso.org website.

I understand we all agree on this.

Kind regards,
Elisabeth