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Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...



On Sun, Sep 11, 2005 at 04:23:42PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit md@Linux.IT (Marco d'Itri)
> 
> > So finally we are up to the good old "every restriction is a
> > discrimination" argument. Even if in the last two years it has become
> > popular among some debian-legal@ contributors while the rest of the
> > project was not looking, I believe that it is based on a
> > misunderstanding of the meaning of DFSG #5.
> 
> For what it's worth, I do not believe that DFSG #5 is a sensible
> reason to consider choice-of-venue clauses non-free. The sensible
> reason to consider choice-of-venue clauses non-free is the following
> general principle:
> 
>    A license can only be free if one can always "accept" the license
>    without losing any right that one had before one received the
>    license.
> 
> (Those who think that licenses are not contracts and do not need to be
> accepted, feel free to substitue "use the rights granted" instead of
> "accept").
> 
> This is, in my opinion, the natural and direct extension of the
> explicit language that a license cannot require "royalties or other
> fees" to be paid in exchange for the rights described in the
> DFSG. Plain and simple, if it requires that you give up *anything*
> that you already had before, then it's not free.
> 
> A choice-of-venue clause is a demand that I give up my right to have
> the specified foreign court automatically throw out a nuisance suit
> citing lack on the grounds of personal jurisidiction. Without the
> license I have this right; with it I don't.
> 
> To try to shoehorn such a fundamental principle into the much more
> specific DSFG#5 just to please some literal-minded apologists who want
> the DFSG to be an objective ruleset rather than a set of guidelines,
> is just silly.

So, what do you propose a new DFSG rule addition for the above principle ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther



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