On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 07:48:12PM -0400, David Nusinow wrote: > > > 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. I thought only Bruce was allowed to make assertions about intent. >:) > > > 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? I think it's a rather strange presumption that it *can't* be avoided, given that my canonical example of the problems caused by choice of venue is that of a wrongful suit from a hostile copyright holder who wouldn't dare to *try* it if they were constrained by the default rules on jurisdiction. And remember that in many jurisdictions, it's also possible to sue for legal expenses under various circumstances. That means that the net (monetary) cost to a copyright holder for defending his copyright is potentially zero. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
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