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Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?



I don't believe the MPL was ever meant to be a free license,just an open one, 
hence the requests and eventual agreement to release it under the GPL.  So 
long as Debian distributes under the GPL, there's no issue for debian-legal.

Regarding the policy implications of "loser pays" contracts.  Such clauses are 
generally unenforceable but are put in anyway so that should a particularly 
egregious claim be made against the company a judge feeling vindictive can 
slap around the plaintiff.  But generally they don't fly.

That being said, as I understand Debian's stance, even though clauses are seen 
as unenforceable we still avoid them as our users shouldn't be required to 
litigate such clauses in the first place.

Oh, wouldn't life be easy if everyone would just use the GPL or BSD license 
and all these variations would just disappear.

-Sean

On Tuesday 08 June 2004 05:34 pm, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 10:30:09PM +0000, Jim Marhaus wrote:
> > | With respect to disputes in which at least one party is a citizen of,
> > | or an entity chartered or registered to do business in the United
> > | States of America, any litigation relating to this License shall be
> > | subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts of the Northern
> > | District of California, with venue lying in Santa Clara County,
> > | California, with the losing party responsible for costs, including
> > | without limitation, court costs and reasonable attorneys' fees and
> > | expenses.
>
> Choice of venue aside, I question whether "if you sue me and lose, you pay
> me my costs" is free.  That might be a good policy for laws (or perhaps
> not; I'm not very informed of the legal theory behind that), but I'm not
> sure if it belongs in a free license.
>
> > | If Contributor has knowledge that a license under a third party's
> > | intellectual property rights is required to exercise the rights granted
> > | by such Contributor under Sections 2.1 or 2.2, Contributor must include
> > | a text file with the Source Code distribution titled "LEGAL'' which
> > | describes the claim and the party making the claim in sufficient detail
> > | that a recipient will know whom to contact. If Contributor obtains such
> > | knowledge after the Modification is made available as described in
> > | Section 3.2, Contributor shall promptly modify the LEGAL file in all
> > | copies Contributor makes available thereafter and shall take other
> > | steps (such as notifying appropriate mailing lists or newsgroups)
> > | reasonably calculated to inform those who received the Covered Code
> > | that new knowledge has been obtained.
>
> This fails the Chinese Dissident test.
>
> --
> Glenn Maynard

-- 
Sean Kellogg
1st Year - UW Law School
c: 206.498.8207    e: skellogg@u.washington.edu
w: http://www.livejournal.com/users/economyguy/  <-- lazy mans blog

"When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything
as if it were a nail."
     -- Abraham Maslow



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