As noted by Wikiwide: Actions that may seem legal, or may even be legal in and of themselves, can still land those in charge in a pot of mess.

Lets assume someone made a new program, based on an existing GPL source code (since that's been the rave to talk about of late). We both know that since it's GPL, it's all fine to post, right? But if Apple claims there's some patent infringement, who decides if that should stay or not? The community? The BoD? TechStaff? And if they come after us for damages, which will easily dwarf the pittance we have in the bank, who gets stuck with that?

Legality isn't always the shield one would hope it is. In a perfect world, where attorneys are paid for by the government, and are as effective and efficient as the ones large companies can afford to pay for, maybe. But that's not the world I live in. And I frankly doubt there is such a place where we could start our company and have that blessing.


Agreed, but again, it's not just a matter of illegal activity. And even then, stopping the activity doesn't mean there won't be challenges in the social arena. Especially when one is railing "it's all FOSS", while the other is looking at case law that indicates the odds of spending time in jail are high, even if one has a German screaming "it's all FOSS" in the courtroom during trial...

That is also true. Though I do see the need for Council diminishing with the size of the community. Frankly, with the levels of participation right now (via recent polls, elections, and even site visit stats), the need for a focusing group to channel those voices into 3 or 5 is less needed. When we were thousands, or even hundreds, it was needed. The last vote total was what, 83? Do we really need 5 people to "focus" that small a group?