Re: QPL non-DFSG compliance? What future for OCaml in Debian?

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 05:35:48PM -0400, Michael Poole wrote:
> Sven Luther writes:
> 
> > On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 04:21:57PM -0400, Michael Poole wrote:
> >> Civil law countries define and treat contracts differently than common
> >> law countries.  I'm not a lawyer, much less one specializing in
> >> international law, so I can't very well say how valid that clause
> >> would be in France.  My guess is that since contracts are more broadly
> >> defined in those countries, it would be binding on licensees.
> >
> > Ok, sounds reasonable, altough i am no lawyer, and really would very much
> > prefer to be bugfixing than all this non-sense.
> 
> I think we all would :)

So, ket's forget of this thing, or at least propose reasonable things. And not
proposing that i go to upstream and tell them they should use the GPL :)

> > Still, if the choice of venue is binding, does this make it non-free or not ?
> 
> 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 ? 

> 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.

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 ? 

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 ? 

I doubt the DFSG has a guideline for freeness to violate the licence, but
then, maybe i misread it ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther