Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?

[Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com>]

Jim Marhaus wrote:

> 
> Hi all -
> 
> With the recent discussion about choice of venue, I was wondering about
> the Mozilla license. Specifically, the Mozilla Public License v. 1.1 [1]
> seems to contain a choice of venue clause in section 11:
> 
> | With respect to disputes in which at least one party is a citizen of, or
> | an entity chartered or registered to do business in the United States of
> | America, any litigation relating to this License shall be subject to the
> | jurisdiction of the Federal Courts of the Northern District of
> | California, with venue lying in Santa Clara County, California, with the
> | losing party responsible for costs, including without limitation, court
> | costs and reasonable attorneys' fees and expenses.
> 
> http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.html
> 
> As discussed recently, choice of venue clauses may be non-free, because
> they require parties to travel unreasonable distances to avoid summary
> decisions against them. Does this clause make the MPL non-free?

I believe so.  Doesn't Debian use Mozilla under the GPL/LGPL license option
though?  (In other words, is anyone using the MPL in a way that matters to
Debian?)

<snip other MPL problems>