Re: Adobe open source license -- is this licence free?
On 25 Jan 2006 20:48:29 -0500, Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> wrote:
> Raul Miller writes:
> > 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.
>
> Why do you say that?
You pretty much answered your question:
> Other countries have quite different rules for venue and jurisdiction.
> Unlike copyright, there are few international treaties on the subject.
...
> Question 12's subequestions h and p at [1] are particularly relevant.
>
> [1]- http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html
This isn't a "you must". No one is requiring that you sue Adobe,
and suing Adobe isn't a normal part of anyone's use or development
cycle. Nor is there anything significant here for Adobe to sue you
about.
> Adobe has attempted (with some success) to use copyright law --
> especially the criminal portions of the DMCA -- to harass and hamper
> those who take advantage of weak copy protections in Adobe software.
DMCA is not relevant here.
> If Adobe's software had been open source, they would have even more
> basis for pursuing such claims, since Adobe could (perhaps reasonably)
> allege that prospective defendants had exercised license-controlled
> copy rights relating to Adobe's software, and that those actions
> subject the defendant to Adobe's preferred venue.
We're talking about technological measures which enforce license
provisions. If the license says anyone can freely own, modify and
redistribute a copy of the software, what problem do we have with
technology which enforces those license provisions?
If there was some technological measures which conflicted with
the copyright that would be a different story -- and it still wouldn't
be a DMCA issue.
> > 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."
>
> If a licensor want to avoid that, they should instead specify that
> suits naming the author(s) or licensor(s) as defendants must be filed
> in that venue, rather than specifying that all suits pertaining to the
> software must be filed in the venue.
As it happens, it says that all suits pertaining to the license must be
filed in the venue.
Legal actions about the software which don't have anything
do do with the license (perhaps: "that adobe stole the software
from SCO") aren't constrained by this clause.
> > 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.
>
> I suspect that, to precisely the same extent, no one has ever
> demonstrated mechanisms where sending a postcard, petting a cat,
> identifying yourself or publishing modifications to third parties
> could prevent those things, either.
You seem to be referring to clauses that restricted modification
(with the exception of "petting the cat", which I've never seen in
any license). The choice of venue clause we are talking about
here does not restrict modification.
If there's some relevant problem here (something which is
specific enough to be distinguished from FUD), we're not
talking about it yet.
--
Raul
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