Re: [Fwd: Debian and CDDL and DFSG]
Martin Man <Martin.Man@Sun.COM> wrote:
> fair enough, but if ftpmasters decide on inclusion/exclusion of certain
> software, there should at least be common consensus concerting certain
> license.
Yes, there should be, but I doubt everyone gets it right every time and
ftpmasters are not exactly debian-legal or vice-versa. Sometimes
there's not consensus to act against accepting a questionable licence
either, until there's an active dispute. Depending on which archive
section a package is in and what the remaining questions are, it may
not even be clearly a bug, and debian-legal is as short-handed as
many other vital parts of the project.
[...]
> I do understand it in this way:
>
> - c-o-v as required by paragraph 9. of CDDL is "a note attached to the
> license itself", to my understanding you can put there any jurisdiction
> you want (you "as the author or contributor"), and yes, it's there to
> predict and ensure that case will be treated properly (according to the
> state of law in a jurisdiction you put to the clause)
>
> - GPL does not have such c-o-v clause at all, which means that I can
> take anyone to any court I decide to, so to me, if I want to sue you,
> GPL gives me even more chance to manipulate the case and choose the
> jurisdiction that will give me most advantages in my case.
You're justifying choice of law. I can understand the benefits of
choice of law, which can help make the licences more predictable.
I do not understand why you need choice of venue. Unless we know how
that venue treats absent defendants, any ambiguous terms in the licence
and some other things, it looks rather like a licensor trying to get
some advantage, such as being able to use their usual legal team against
a smaller defendant and stopping that defendant being judged by their
own state's people when appropriate. As you note, it isn't usual for
free software licences to specify venue, as there are other agreements
which do that. Why is choice of venue needed?
The particular choice of Santa Clara County, California for opensolaris
scares me - after all, it's where Adobe of freesklyarov.org fame chooses
as venue for its licence disputes. But opensolaris isn't up for
inclusion in debian itself, is it? What CDDL package is under
discussion here?
I await your reply with interest.
Regards,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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