Re: ocaml, QPL and the DFSG: Choice of venue argumentation.

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

On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 01:04:43PM -0400, mdpoole@troilus.org wrote:
> > And as said above, what about folk wanting to sue the ocaml authors based on
> > the licence ? 
> 
> I am not sure what in the license would give rise to a cause for
> action against the authors: it grants others more rights than they
> normally have, although some are conditional on certain performance by
> the licensee.  The authors make no warranty or promise in the license.

See my other response about this. Still what would give the upstream author
cause to sue an honest user in the first place ? Your argument cuts both way.

> Regardless, the normal rules for venue would apply: among other rules
> for venue, a plaintiff could only file suit in a court with personal
> jurisdiction over the defendant(s).  Assuming that the Ocaml authors
> live and work exclusively near Versailles, it would be the court
> there.  Just like SCO cannot sue me in Utah, SCO would have to do
> business here in Virginia for me to sue them here.

Ok, but this is US law, isn't it ? 

> The freeness issue comes down to this: Courts normally give the
> benefit of venue to the defendant.  Why should a free software license
> change that?

I will ask the upstream author this, and see what they have to say about this.
But still, there is nothing in the DFSG which explicitly forbids it, so if you
want to declare the QPL non-free based on this, we would need an DFSG change.

BTW, i wonder if it would make sense to contact trolltech's juridical
department or whatever over these issues ? After all they did the legal work
of it, and if we are able to get them to do a clarified QPL 1.1 or something,
then it would be rather easy to get all those QPL software out there to
migrate to it. 

Friendly,

Sven Luther