Josselin Mouette writes: > Le jeudi 24 mai 2007 à 10:54 -0700, Don Armstrong a écrit : >> This License shall be governed by the law of the jurisdiction >> specified in a notice contained within the Original Software >> (except to the extent applicable law, if any, provides otherwise), >> excluding such jurisdiction's conflict-of-law provisions. Any >> litigation relating to this License shall be subject to the >> jurisdiction of the courts located in the jurisdiction and venue >> specified in a notice contained within the Original Software, with >> the losing party responsible for costs, including, without >> limitation, court costs and reasonable attorneys' fees and >> expenses. > > Please stop the choice-of-law bullshit. This clause is moot, we can > ignore it.
Moot in what venues? I live in a state that has enacted the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), which -- among other things -- gives effect[1] to choice of venue clauses in shrink-wrap licenses unless a party can show that the choice is "unreasonable and unjust". US courts have made that barrier rather high in practice. I'm not a fan of judging licenses free because Debian thinks certain clauses are moot. If the clause is in fact moot, the license is buggy. If the clause is not moot -- at the time of upload or some point afterwards -- it can cause significant harm. Michael Poole [1]- http://www.law.upenn.edu/bll/archives/ulc/ucita/ucita200.htm is a copy; see section 110.
