Re: QPL non-DFSG compliance? What future for OCaml in Debian?
Sven Luther writes:
> The exact text of the licence is :
>
> Choice of Law
>
> This license is governed by the Laws of France. Disputes shall be
> settled by the Court of Versailles.
>
> So this means that it is a question of choice of law rather than choice of
> venue. The second phrase though would also mention choice of venue right,
> altough i have not clear understanding of the exact meaning of the "shall"
> verb. Furthermore, it seems that accordying to french law, the choice of venue
> is in the domicil of the defendant, at least in principle, which would make
> this second point void. Not sure though if there is not a special case to be
> applied to the software licence, or the international reach of this case
> though.
At least in US contract law, the second sentence is a valid way to
choose venue for contract disputes. For a free license, I do not know
if it would be binding in a common law country, but I would imagine
that it would be binding in a civil law country such as France.
To elaborate:
The rules for personal jurisdiction (where you can be sued in the US)
generally say that you have to live, be headquartered, or do business
in the district where someone files suit against you. It sounds like,
that far, French law is the same.
That can be overridden by contract and perhaps other agreements; I do
not know whether a unilateral license grant is sufficient to do that.
Without a meeting of the minds, a US court would not consider a
unilateral grant to be a binding contract, but there may be some other
basis for a court to accept the clause.
Civil law countries define and treat contracts differently than common
law countries. I'm not a lawyer, much less one specializing in
international law, so I can't very well say how valid that clause
would be in France. My guess is that since contracts are more broadly
defined in those countries, it would be binding on licensees.
Michael Poole
Reply to: