Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue

[Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Raul Miller <moth@debian.org> wrote:
>> Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com> wrote:
>> >(If you pointed me to an evidently valid patent which is being infringed, I
>> >would say "Get that program out!")
>
>On Thu, Jul 15, 2004 at 11:34:02AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> You'd be going against Debian policy, then.
>
>In what sense?  We've done this with the unisys compression patents.

We've only removed software that's subject to actively enforced patents.
The patents we know about but which aren't being enforced are ignored.

>Or are you saying that our standard isn't so much "obviously valid" but
>"obviously likely to cause us legal probems", with some fairly amorphous
>concept of "obviously"?

A fairly strict definition of "obviously". If the patent holder
threatens people, we pull the software. If they don't, we don't.

>> >In contrast, if the copyright holder declares his right to terminate the
>> >license based on a termination clause, there really is no arguing with it. 
>> >At all.  It's not just a lawsuit, it's "give up and go home".
>> 
>> Which is the effective situation we're in with patents.
>
>That's the effective situation we're in with patents for the cases where
>there's no explicit clauses in the license to trigger this sort of event.
>We tend to reject licenses as non-free when they have explicit "patent"
>clauses to trigger these sorts of events.
>
>So, in essense, this becomes an argument that we should treat licenses
>as non-free when they have explicit venue clauses and allow them to be
>free if they only treat venue implicitly.

I'm not entirely clear how that follows.

>However, it's also an argument based on existing practice, which can be
>trumped by showing that existing practice is incorrect.

Indeed. But in order to do that, you have to show that existing practice
is incorrect.
-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org