Re: ocaml, QPL and the DFSG: Choice of venue argumentation.
On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 02:07:39PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 02:25:48PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > | Choice of Law
>
> > | This license is governed by the Laws of France. Disputes shall be
> > | settled by the Court of Versailles.
>
> > Ok, this is the last point of contention. The choice of laws seems to be
> > acceptable, and the choice of venue seems to be the only thing under
> > discussion, altough the DFSG doens't make any mention of it.
>
> > I would thus consider it to be a minor inconvenience to any honest recipient
> > of the
> > software, and have a hard time realising that this would be an insurmentable
> > cost in any case, beyond a few international phone calls, letters or other
> > ways of remote conferencing.
>
> > The cost of hiring a lawyer in france local to the Court of Versailles is
> > probably less or similar to the cost of hirinig a lawyer of similar competence
> > and fluent in the Laws of France, in a country local to the defendent. I don't
> > have hard data over this though, and would welcome hard data to the contrary.
> > Wild speculation is of no use here though.
>
> But the difference is this: your cost and my cost to find a lawyer who
> can argue French law in Davenport, Iowa is going to be roughly the same;
Ah ? And i don't have to travel to Davenport, Iova if you are deciding to
break the licence of my QPLed software, and incorporate it in your proprietary
software which you distribute and make a nice profit on ?
> most of the cost is going to come from retaining a bilingual lawyer,
> which both of us would need to have, not from communicating with him
> overseas. But if we're both trying to find a lawyer who can argue
> French law in *Versailles*, the equation is suddenly heavily biased
> towards the copyright holder; you can use your usual legal counsel, but
While in the other case it is heavily biased toward the licence violator.
> I (supposing that I don't speak French) have to first find a lawyer
> overseas, and then pay for translation services to be able to
> communicate with him. Professional translation services are comparable
> in price to professional legal services, so this makes my cost higher
> than yours, biasing the outcome.
So, don't violate the licence, and you will give no no reason for upstream to
sue you.
Making guidelines based upon the notion that upstream authors are raving
madmans intented to sue everybody out there and do legal harassment of them
seems a bit farfetched to me. But if you feel so, go ahead, and propose a GR
amending the DFSG for it.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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