Re: Adobe open source license -- is this licence free?
On 1/25/06, Francesco Poli <frx@firenze.linux.it> wrote:
> > Any dispute arising out of or
> > related to this Agreement shall be brought in the courts of Santa
> > Clara County, California, USA.
>
> This is a choice of venue and is considered non-free by many
> debian-legal contributors (including me...).
And some of us think it's reasonable.
If Adobe is going to take legal action against someone else,
they'll have to deal with the jurisdiction(s) where this someone
else has a presence.
There's some benefit to Adobe if that jurisdiction is willing to turn
control of the case to the california courts, but that doesn't seem
to have any direct relevance on software freedom. It's not like
there are all that many things for Adobe to be taking action
against someone else on here.
The big deal here is that if someone sues Adobe, Adobe
doesn't have to incur huge legal fees defending themselves.
Since it's free software, why would they want to?
Choice of venue, to me, means "we're giving this away, and
we don't want to have to pay big legal fees because of that."
No one has ever demonstrated any mechanism where choice
of venue could prevent porting, security patches, enhancements
or other such things. At least, not that I'm aware of.
--
Raul
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