Looking for a solution: Allow board members to COPY a board, but not edit it

[Kristyn Bore]

We currently have a public board that is set up as sample or template. Our clients who want to use this board are added to the board as a member and instructed to copy the board to their own trello account and then customize their own board. However, they don't follow instructions and so clients are constantly making personal changes to the "group board" that all members can copy. 

I upgraded to Premium so I have the option to add users to the board, but restrict their ability to make changes. By adding the users to the "Workspace" they can copy the board. As each member comes to the board, I have to manually change their status to "observer" so they cannot edit or make changes on the board. 

I was hoping there was a way to set the "observer" permission as a global setting so I don't have to manually change the setting for every person. 

My question: am I missing something? Is there a better way to accomplish what I want? Or another way to do this so that board members/users can copy the template but not edit it or make change to it?...and they are given the correct permissions automatically without me having to manually change a permission?

[Spiro]

Any answers for this?  I'm using Trello and I'm in the same boat.  I have a master template board which I have created for everyone so it should not be allowed to be altered or any changes made.  I would like users to be able to copy the master template board to their own account whereupon they can make all of the changes they like to what now is their own board.  Just not to the original template, because, well, it's a template!  It's for everyone to use and if one person make changes to the master template then the next user is getting an altered board.  As the OP has stated, no matter how much you tell people not to touch the original template they will.  Lack of this functionality seems really odd because the more people are allowed to copy boards to their own account would mean they will eventually want to keep customizing their board which would potentially lead to them upgrading to a paid Atlassian account.  Seems like this has been going nowhere for years.