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Re: New BitTorrent License Preview



A possible problem:

You must make it clear that any such warranty, support, indemnity or liability obligation is offered by you alone, and you hereby agree to indemnify the Licensor and every Contributor for any liability incurred by the Licensor or such Contributor as a result of warranty, support, indemnity or liability terms you offer.

This is nearly identical in wording to this clause from the cddl:

>>             You hereby agree to indemnify the Initial Developer and
>>             every Contributor for any liability incurred by the
>>             Initial Developer or such Contributor as a result of
>>             warranty, support, indemnity or liability terms You
>>             offer.

Against which M. J. Ray makes a fairly convincing argument in message 4322b586$0$91790$892e7fe2@authen.white.readfreenews.net, which i have included below for reference:

"Joe Smith" <unknown_kev_cat@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>             You hereby agree to indemnify the Initial Developer and
>>             every Contributor for any liability incurred by the
>>             Initial Developer or such Contributor as a result of
>>             warranty, support, indemnity or liability terms You
>>             offer.
[...]
But you may not offer a warenty that could make upstram liable unless you
indemify upstream.
The idea is that if you supply a warrenty and a user tries to sue upstream
under YOUR warenty, you must step in to prevent upstream from being held
liable.

Perfectly reasonable, IMHO.

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?

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.




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