Re: QPL non-DFSG compliance? What future for OCaml in Debian?

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 07:37:59PM -0400, Michael Poole wrote:
> Sven Luther writes:
> 
> >> Most of debian-legal consider "choice of venue" clauses to be
> >> non-free, since they compel any redistributor or even user of the
> >> software to present themselves in a foreign court; even in the same
> >
> > Well, sure, but what about the dual case. The case were the offendor is
> > violating the licence and upstream is supposed to go to a foreign court,
> > potentially an expensive and silly one, to prosecute ? 
> 
> A certain practical consideration comes into play here.
> 
> Point one: The Debian Social Contract says "Our priorities are our
> users and free software" -- no mention of authors, and there is an
> abundance of free software authors.  We are nowhere near running short
> of authors willing to write software under DFSG-free licenses, so the
> supply of free software is not threatened.

Ok, but this doesn't authorize us to threat them like dirt. Still, what would
we be without the authors ? Nothing at all. Also, i have some doubts about the
supply problem. It may be true for certain class of packages, but other
clearly are in the 'there is no other author' category.

> Point two: For each author, there are many users.  Most authors and
> most users will comply with their end of the license, but a rogue
> author can affect more users with impunity than a rogue user could
> affect authors.

Well, i am doubtfull of this, would you care about a real example ?

And in the case of code hoarder, and licence violators, we all suffer from
those, just we may not realize this.

> Point three: The actual liability if the author drags you into court
> and you cannot represent yourself there is much greater than the
> actual damage if someone violates copyright on the software for which
> you "charge" a promise to redistribute source code.

Only in a bogus-lawsuit friendly country though, which i belive not being the
case in france.

> >> country, that can impose significant costs on the defendant.  I do not
> >> know of debian-legal contributors who consider such clauses DFSG-free.
> >
> > Well, contrary to the US, i don't expect that a french judge would be starting
> > prosecution for silly reason, like it often happens in the US and its
> > law-suite culture, so in this particular instance i don't think this would be
> > so much of a problem, if the defensor is not in violation of the licence, and
> > can prove so, maybe even without going in person or hiring legal advice.
> 
> Why are French judges so much better than US judges?  It was not so

Well, US is world wide known for doign lawsuit for everything, and that the
one with most money usually wins the case, is that not so ? 

> long ago that Belgium passed a law that claimed world-wide
> jurisdiction over war crimes, and a judge there commenced suit against

Well, this maybe the only way to bring some criminal to justice, isn't it ? 

> the US Secretary of Defence.  It was also not long ago that a French

Well, i won't go into this, but i have some personal reasons to know that this
may not be that far fetched. And given the US recent iraq debacle, not
speakign of all the cold war years, you would assuredly find many reasons to
do so.

> court ordered Yahoo! to block French users from using a set of web

Well, i believe that they were right to do so, it is not my fault if the
US allow hate speach and such, under the cover of free speach. I also see
the US doing the same for child (and not child) porn, no ? And not to speak
about downloaded music and such :)

> pages -- web pages that were run from the US and which contained
> content submitted by Yahoo's users.  I am not convinced that other
> court systems are inherently less prone to abuse than the US's.

Well, we are going seriously offtopic here, but if you want to engage into
private conversation about this, you are free too.

> > Now, if the defensor is in violation of the licence and thus has bad
> > concience, do we really want to make it easy for him ? 
> 
> The three points I listed above are sufficient for me to favor the
> user with respect to court venue.  If some license were proposed that

Well, i am doubtfull if they would be enough to convince my upstream though.

> favored neither, I would consider it differently, but I suspect no
> author would seriously offer a license that specified a mutually
> *in*convenient venue for lawsuits.

So ? This only seems reasonable, i am sure you would do the same in case of
you releasing the code, and in any way, i do believe that the upstream author
is not the only one allowed to fill lawsuits, isn't it ?

> > Think about this, and what it means for debian. We are more likely to see this
> > to be problematic for an upstream to sue someone in violation of the licence,
> > and in this case, violation of the licence probably means that someone is
> > hoarding the modifications, and not giving back the code, as Brian claimed he
> > wants to do for example. Do we really gain by making it more difficult to
> > ensure that upstream is able to defend its licence ? Would it not be better
> > for us to make sure that violation of licences are found out and punished ? 
> 
> You assume that upstream is less likely to abuse the license or courts

Well, in this particular case, knowing the upstream author and the french
judicial system, i know that he is less likely to do so. My own guess is that
it would never go beyond a few email exchange, or maybe a formal letter.
Unless the violating side would be a big corporation and deliberatedly
violated the licence. And since both microsoft and sun would have interest in
the ocaml code base and technology, this later may be understandable.
I don't know about other authors though, but i have serious doubts of anyone
being able to engage into unfounded harassment tactics without a corrupt judge
to stand by its side, and i do believe that this is much more likely to happen
in the US and in other unlawfull countries than in the french court chosen
here.

> than a user (or perhaps that the expected damage due to upstream abuse
> is less).  It is not clear to me that this is the case.  Do we really

Yeah, well the opposite is not clear to me also, and i happen to know the
people involved personally, so i am able to make that judgement call.
Furthermore, it is my package, and i belive i am the person responsible for
making said judgement call, since i would be the first sued in case of
problems, would i not ? 

> gain by making it more difficult for users to defend their permitted
> use of the software, given that we allow upstream to specify which
> laws should be used?

Well, cite me one example of such harassment ? Do we really want to go rigid
over this while it is only pure blind speculation and fear ? And in this case,
is our fear for our user any more acceptable than upstream's fear to get its
licence violated, or even to get sued over it in his own right ? 

> > I doubt the DFSG has a guideline for freeness to violate the licence, but
> > then, maybe i misread it ?
> >
> > Friendly,
> 
> You might want to change your sig.  Your last question does not fit

Well, i consider anyone in the debian project on friendly terms, it seems this
is not really reciprocated though, and some consider me as a scapegoat or
something, but this doesn't change it.

And really, i don't see how my last question has anything to do with that ?
the friendliness or not has nothing to do with the way you argue, even if you
make rethoric questions and punch lines ? But then, i am no native english
speaker, and maybe i seriously slipped here and was more offensive than i
intented ? Still the question remains, all this thread seems to be about
people arguing that a would be harassing upstream could molest our users, and
we are ready to make violating the licence more easy over that hyptothetical
scenario, discarding common sense and the case at hand.

> with "Friendly".  As you noticed, the DFSG has neither guidelines that
> permit users to violate the license nor guidelines that permit authors
> to abuse court systems.

Well, so let it stay so. Some here seemed to suggest it though, but maybe i 
misunderstood them, or they don't really realize the implications of it.

Friendly,

Sven Luther