Re: ocaml, QPL and the DFSG: Choice of venue argumentation.
On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 11:59:26AM -0400, Michael Poole wrote:
> Sven Luther writes:
>
> > On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 11:21:22AM -0400, Michael Poole wrote:
> >> Examples of that are pre-trial conferences, where both sides must be
> >> physically present (either in person or through counsel) before the
> >> judge, so that they can efficiently agree on scheduling and procedural
> >> issues.
> >
> > Ok, still do you think that a judge would have no consideration if the
> > defendent is a poor student on the other side of the world, or otherwise has
> > not the physical means to be present ? And in this case, how could the judge
> > make the judgement binding anyway ?
>
> I don't know how much leeway a judge has to do that. The plaintiff
> can (and often will) appeal any decision by the judge that deviates
> from the normal practice.
Well, but the palintiff would have to have some evidence to backup its claim
at first. Given the general lack of time for the judges here, i seriously
doubt they would be amenable to bullshit cases, except if there was some
corruption coming into play.
> There are a lot of ways a judgment could be binding, mostly by making
> life very unpleasant if the defendant ever visits that country -- for
> example, arrest for contempt of court or seizure of assets upon entry.
Yeah, sure.
> > Let's keep in mind that the case at hand is one where we want to protect the
> > defendent from legal harassment. If so, i think there should easily be able to
> > put some doubt in the mind of the judge even with a simple letter.
>
> Perhaps there should be, but my experience with and watching the US
That's the real problem here. The US justice system is done in sucha way that
lawsuits over everything is commonplace. The rest of the world doesn't work
the same way. So we clearly need some legal advice on how things stand in
france before we can statuate on this.
But again, in any case, this has no relevance ot any of the existing DFSG
points, so we cannot judge a licence to be DFSG non-free over this, unless we
ammend the DFSG.
> > But again, the DFSG makes no provision whatsoever for this kind of things.
>
> The usual explanation is that it discriminates against people outside
Well, any licence allowing the user to be sued discriminate against people not
having the time or money to play legal games.
> the chosen venue. Your response in the past was that the DFSG should
> not protect copyright infringement, and it should not. The legal
Yes.
> fact, though, is that until a court rules on the matter, claims of
> copyright infringement are just claims. Whether the copyright owner
> files suit out of malice or misunderstanding, an innocent defendant
> may still have to appear in some very inconvenient court that would
> not otherwise have jurisdiction.
Ok, but i am not convinced by the DFSG #5 invocation here. After all the same
could happen for any wild accusation, even if there is no licence involved. I
could for example claim that you are using code copyrighted by me in your
proprietary software product, even though you never touched a code licenced by
me, or do like SCO and refute the legality of the GPL.
So, would this warrant declaring a piece of QPLed software non-free ? We
cannot hide behind this kind of statement out of fear of what may happen, or
we would be paralyzed forever.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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