Questions asked during interviews with city/government staff regarding procurement of FOSS: 1. Are you aware of, or does your organization have legal guidelines or a procedure in place for legal review of each individual procurement of software assuming a cost threshold is met? (whether or not lawyers are actually involved - this could be as simple as merely identifying and mitigating risks in procurement)

• Is there a cost threshold, and if so, how much?
• If there are written legal procurement guidelines, may we have a copy for our research? May we publish parts or the entire copy?
• What are the major parts of the legal guidelines that you most often have to reference/deal with?

1. How often do you have to reference, or be sure to comply with government procurement regulations in place in your jurisdiction?
2. Does the mere downloading of FOSS software trigger procurement procedure requirements?
3. Have you ever had “mismatch” issues between the sprit/intent of the RFP and responses received from bidding vendors?
4. Have you ever needed to change or negotiate contracts in the procurement process when dealing with FOSS projects? What kind of changes/negotiations to the contract were necessary?

• Choice of law / venue issues
• Indemnity of IP infringement (Trademark issues, copyright issues, patent issues)
• Tort - Personal Injury, Data Privacy

1. Aside from any written procurement legal guides that your organization uses, are there any other known (informal or common knowledge amongst staff) best practices in place in your organization for dealing with legal issues in the procurement of FOSS?
2. Are there any legal issues you’ve encountered or heard of others encountering regarding the procurement of FOSS that your organization has found to be difficult to overcome, or for which there does not seem to be any clear guidance on how to overcome.