Re: CDDL

[MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop>]

"Joe Smith" <unknown_kev_cat@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>             You hereby agree to indemnify the Initial Developer and
> >>             every Contributor for any liability incurred by the
> >>             Initial Developer or such Contributor as a result of
> >>             warranty, support, indemnity or liability terms You
> >>             offer.
[...]
> But you may not offer a warenty that could make upstram liable unless you 
> indemify upstream.
> The idea is that if you supply a warrenty and a user tries to sue upstream 
> under YOUR warenty, you must step in to prevent upstream from being held 
> liable.
> 
> Perfectly reasonable, IMHO.

It doesn't seem at all reasonable to me. It could harm those who
have an agreement to offer support as an agent of an upstream
non-initial developer (like "Epson service centre" or whatever),
and maybe otherwise. Why should this licence be allowed to
restrict business relationships?

At best, it makes some agent deals into lawyerbombs, because
it's not clear which terms would win out if both exist (and
I think it would be the copyright agreement that beats the
commercial agreement, with law going in its current direction).

Restricting support deals for main could have awkward
consequences for companies who supply debian-based services.
This clause could have been worded differently ("in the absence
of other agreements..." perhaps) but it wasn't. Please reconsider
whether it discriminates against licensed support agents.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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