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

[David Nusinow <david_nusinow@verizon.net>]

On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 10:46:49PM +0200, Francesco Poli wrote:
> On Fri, 09 Sep 2005 17:17:06 -0400 David Nusinow wrote:
> 
> > 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. 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. 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, but it doesn't work that way, AFAICT.
> 
> The DFSG are guidelines to determine whether a *right-holder* gives
> enough permissions to *licensees*, not whether *Debian* gives enough
> permissions to *right-holders*.

Yes, but you must ground this in the rights that the DFSG guarantees the
licensee. The two arguments that I've seen are based on either 1) cost or
2) discrimination. Neither of these holds up in my eyes. The cost is only
associated with litigation, rather than the use, modification, and
distribution of software. 

I don't like the idea of choice of venue clauses either, but I'm more
uncomfortable with extending the DFSG to deal with things outside the realm
of the basic freedoms we associate with software.

 - David Nusinow