Re: Choice-of-Venue is OK with the DFSG.
On Tue, Aug 17, 2004 at 01:38:26PM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote:
> I saw a short note by Andrew Suffield regarding Choice of Venue in Free
> Software licenses, which was pointed to by the Debian weekly news.
>
> Choice of venue can be a useful clause for the purpose of protecting
> Free Software authors from frivolous lawsuits /against them /in venues
> where it is difficult or impossible to defend themselves, but where they
> could still be damaged. In general such damage would be due to
> reciprocal treaties or the fact that they might someday wish to visit a
> nation where a judgement exists against them.
>
> Note that a disclaimer of warranties is not by itself sufficient to
> protect the author. No one license term is. A court may decide not to
> honor a disclaimer of warranty, while still honoring choice of venue and
> sending the case elsewhere.
>
> It was not my intent in designing the DFSG to rule out choice-of-venue.
> I do not recall anyone else connected with the DFSG making comments
> against it during the discussion leading up to acceptance of the DFSG.
>
> The closest DFSG term to this issue is the one about discrimination
> against persons or groups. A choice of venue of the actual jurusdiction
> in which the copyright holder is resident would not in my opinion be
> discriminatory. A choice designed to increase difficulty might be.
>
> I don't see that the DFSG language as it currently exists reads against
> all choice-of-venue clauses. Nor do I see that additional language to
> add that feature to the DFSG is necessary.
Thanks Bruce. Altough upstream already agreed to waive this clause, i believe
much as you do above, and that debian-legal has been slanted much in defending
the rights of the user of free software, at the detriment of the upstream
author.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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