Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> wrote:
> Scripsit Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
>> The licensor *already* has carte blanche to harrass licensees with
>> fivolous lawsuits.
>
> No - if the court throws out the case ex officio because of lack of
> jurisdiction, no harassment results.
Eh? They can sue you in your jurisdiction. In the case you're worrying
about (obnoxious large businesses suing people in order to intimidate
them), the difference in cost is unlikely to deter them.
>> I think that a copyleft license is utterly pointless if there's no way
>> for the licensor to be able to afford to sue infringers.
>
> According to your argument, the GPL and BSD license must be pointless,
> because they don't contain any obnoxious choice-of-venue clauses.
If the licensor doesn't have enough money to enforce them, then yes, I
think they're pointless. What's the point of a license that you can't
enforce?
>> But the freedom to be able to enforce the requirements of a software
>> license *does* have something to do with software freedom.
>
> Not anything I can read in the DFSG.
The DFSG are not holy writ, but how about if I phrase it as
discrimination against licensors without money?
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org
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