Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...

[David Nusinow <david_nusinow@verizon.net>]

On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 04:31:17PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 05:17:06PM -0400, David Nusinow wrote:
> > Ok, thank you for clarifying that. I think we need to consider the point
> > that Matthew has been raising though, that a choice of venue clause may be
> > important for a program author to successfully defend their copyright.
> 
> A "no modifications allowed" clause may be important for a program
> author to successfully protect their reputation, but we don't consider
> such a restriction free; one *should* be able to defend one's reputation
> relying only on a "identify all changes prominently" clause, and one
> *should* be able to defend one's copyright within the existing framework
> governing personal jurisdiction.

Sure, but it's arguable whether choice of venue truly restricts a user's
freedom. The no modifications allowed is pretty obviously non-free. 

Part of the issue with the existing framework of personal jurisdiction is
that we don't seem to have a clear idea what it actually is. I haven't seen
any links to documents explaining how jurisdiction is actually determined
in real life cases. Michael Poole's link from elsewhere in the thread is
the closest thing, but it's unclear to me how exactly this would work in
real world situations. Since the actual framework remains a mystery to me,
I see issues with declaring that the framework is sufficient and doesn't
need to be modified by a license. 

I've googled looking for examples of how a venue is determined normally in
international cases, but to no avail as of yet, but I'll keep looking. Some
real data would help here.

> > If the justification for this is to be grounded in the discrimination
> > clause of the DFSG, we can't choose to discriminate against the
> > program's authors.
> 
> Even if we accept this argument, how is putting the authors on equal
> footing with the users "discrimination"?

Perhaps that wasn't the best way to argue that I don't think it falls under
the discrimination clause, as some have argued. This strikes me as a really
far cry from saying something like "No Israelis can use this software",
which is the sort of thing the clause was really meant to protect against.

> > If this is to be grounded in the clause about not requiring a fee, we can't
> > require that the program's author be forced to take on the burden of such a
> > fee if they need to defend their copyright.
> 
> Sorry, this sentence registers as complete nonsense to me.  If you're
> going to claim that requiring certain things of *authors* before their
> code can be included in Debian is a "fee", how is this particular "fee"
> different from the "fee" of publishing source code?

If someone is going to file a lawsuit, someone has to pay for it. If the
two sides live in different places, one of them has to travel no matter
what, and thus pay for that expense. If we say that choice of venue clauses
aren't Free, then the person bringing the suit will very likely have to
travel and pay the fee (or that's my interpretation of Humberto and Michael
Poole's responses). If not, then the person defending the suit will have to
pay the fee. Either way, there is a cost involved. Why are we choosing
sides if such a cost can't be avoided?

 - David Nusinow