Re: CDDL

["Joe Smith" <unknown_kev_cat@hotmail.com>]

> It doesn't seem at all reasonable to me. It could harm those who
> have an agreement to offer support as an agent of an upstream
> non-initial developer (like "Epson service centre" or whatever),
> and maybe otherwise. Why should this licence be allowed to
> restrict business relationships?

That is very true, and an unfortuante concequence of not thinking things 
out.
However, The stituation might be resolvable by changing the agent contract
to explicit overide CDDL. No idea how that would be treated in court though.

It also seems strange that one of the inital developers would have a 
warrenty agent
which could offer warenties on software the inital developer states (via 
the licence)
that they are not interested in offering warentee, or having anybody offer 
warenty themselves.
Remmeber that the CDDL is a by-file licence, and thus the inital developer 
could have placed their
code in a different file with a licence without such a clause.

> At best, it makes some agent deals into lawyerbombs, because
> it's not clear which terms would win out if both exist (and
> I think it would be the copyright agreement that beats the
> commercial agreement, with law going in its current direction).


> Restricting support deals for main could have awkward
> consequences for companies who supply debian-based services.
> This clause could have been worded differently ("in the absence
> of other agreements..." perhaps) but it wasn't. Please reconsider
> whether it discriminates against licensed support agents.
Debian is not a legal entity. There are no warenty agent contracts. Most
support services that exist for Debian that offer things like warenties do
it only as an agent of themselves, so i don't see the problem. Most Debian
Developers (AFAIK) are not interested in third parties offering warrenty on
their behalf.