Re: Debian OpenSolaris port, exchange with Sun folks in webforum/MailingList
On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 02:48:15PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 10:47:59PM +1000, Paul TBBle Hampson wrote:
> > > These two do not appear to be compatible (unless you think a license
> > > can be "free" with a venue choice that you do not consider "sane"), so
> > > I must have misunderstood one of them. Could you elaborate, please?
>
> > If we replace "sane" with "enforcable" (which is what I think the OP was
> > getting at) then they are in fact compatible. A license does not become
> > non-free if it contains unenforcable components, unless it contains a component
> > that specifies that any unenforcable clause voids the whole license.
>
> But choice-of-venue clauses, at least in contracts, *are* enforceable in
> some significant jurisdictions -- like the one which hosts
> ftp-master.debian.org.
>
> So their freeness is still an issue.
I get the feeling that it is not the freeness of them which is an issue, they
don't really make the software more or less free after all, since they enter
in account only if the licence is broken, and we don't really can consider
freeness definitions based on more or less broken local juridictions.
Now, that doesn't mean we have to accept them, but we would reject them not
based on the DFSG, but based on the risk they bring to our infrastructure and
mirror network and ...
Not sure if there is a precedent over this distinction, but maybe this is the
same as how we handle patented code, crypto stuff and sensitive stuff like
video and music issues.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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