Re: QPL non-DFSG compliance? What future for OCaml in Debian?
Sven Luther writes:
>> Most of debian-legal consider "choice of venue" clauses to be
>> non-free, since they compel any redistributor or even user of the
>> software to present themselves in a foreign court; even in the same
>
> Well, sure, but what about the dual case. The case were the offendor is
> violating the licence and upstream is supposed to go to a foreign court,
> potentially an expensive and silly one, to prosecute ?
A certain practical consideration comes into play here.
Point one: The Debian Social Contract says "Our priorities are our
users and free software" -- no mention of authors, and there is an
abundance of free software authors. We are nowhere near running short
of authors willing to write software under DFSG-free licenses, so the
supply of free software is not threatened.
Point two: For each author, there are many users. Most authors and
most users will comply with their end of the license, but a rogue
author can affect more users with impunity than a rogue user could
affect authors.
Point three: The actual liability if the author drags you into court
and you cannot represent yourself there is much greater than the
actual damage if someone violates copyright on the software for which
you "charge" a promise to redistribute source code.
>> country, that can impose significant costs on the defendant. I do not
>> know of debian-legal contributors who consider such clauses DFSG-free.
>
> Well, contrary to the US, i don't expect that a french judge would be starting
> prosecution for silly reason, like it often happens in the US and its
> law-suite culture, so in this particular instance i don't think this would be
> so much of a problem, if the defensor is not in violation of the licence, and
> can prove so, maybe even without going in person or hiring legal advice.
Why are French judges so much better than US judges? It was not so
long ago that Belgium passed a law that claimed world-wide
jurisdiction over war crimes, and a judge there commenced suit against
the US Secretary of Defence. It was also not long ago that a French
court ordered Yahoo! to block French users from using a set of web
pages -- web pages that were run from the US and which contained
content submitted by Yahoo's users. I am not convinced that other
court systems are inherently less prone to abuse than the US's.
> Now, if the defensor is in violation of the licence and thus has bad
> concience, do we really want to make it easy for him ?
The three points I listed above are sufficient for me to favor the
user with respect to court venue. If some license were proposed that
favored neither, I would consider it differently, but I suspect no
author would seriously offer a license that specified a mutually
*in*convenient venue for lawsuits.
> Think about this, and what it means for debian. We are more likely to see this
> to be problematic for an upstream to sue someone in violation of the licence,
> and in this case, violation of the licence probably means that someone is
> hoarding the modifications, and not giving back the code, as Brian claimed he
> wants to do for example. Do we really gain by making it more difficult to
> ensure that upstream is able to defend its licence ? Would it not be better
> for us to make sure that violation of licences are found out and punished ?
You assume that upstream is less likely to abuse the license or courts
than a user (or perhaps that the expected damage due to upstream abuse
is less). It is not clear to me that this is the case. Do we really
gain by making it more difficult for users to defend their permitted
use of the software, given that we allow upstream to specify which
laws should be used?
> I doubt the DFSG has a guideline for freeness to violate the licence, but
> then, maybe i misread it ?
>
> Friendly,
You might want to change your sig. Your last question does not fit
with "Friendly". As you noticed, the DFSG has neither guidelines that
permit users to violate the license nor guidelines that permit authors
to abuse court systems.
Michael Poole
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