Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> wrote:
> Scripsit Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
>
>> But that's already possible. The majority (all?) of licenses that we
>> ship don't prevent me from being sued arbitrarily.
>
> The majority (all!) of license we ship do not demand that you agree
> *in advance* to waive your usual protections against arbitrary
> lawsuits in exotic courts.
Why does the "exotic courts" aspect actually make any significant
difference? Are you honestly asserting that the cost of me travelling
to, say, Finland is going to be large compared to the costs of hiring a
lawyer to defend me?
>> The only difference that choice of venue makes is that it
>> potentially increases the cost for me.
>
> By orders of magnitude.
I'd like to see those figures.
>> Within the UK alone, I can end up paying fairly large travel fees to
>> deal with a court case.
>
> It may be that you do not have any concept of "home court" within the
> UK. That does not mean that the rest of the world's Debian users
> should be expected to suffer from that fault.
If I'm living in the Scottish highlands, that doesn't help a great deal.
>>> I'll agree here ! Then why leave easy targets to lawsuit sharks ?
>
>> How do we protect against that currently?
>
> We protect against leaving easy target by considering software
> non-free if its licence demands that you position yourself as an
> easier target that you would be without the license.
Any license that imposes any restrictions on me leaves me an easier
target than I would be without the license - it's much easier to find an
excuse to sue someone over a piece of GPLed software than a piece of
BSD licensed code.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org
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