On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 06:04:33PM +0000, Henning Makholm wrote: > I have previously argued for this position in the context of other > licenses, but I have become less convinced that it is actually as > important as I used to think.
I don't feel strongly about this clause, though I'd like to understand its effect. > In particular, I am not sure that this clause effectively creates any > liability for the commercial redistributor that goes beyond that usual > negligence-based liability (does "common law" speak about "culpa"?) he > would have independently of any licence language mentioning the > situation - in any of the jurisdictions that we otherwise care about? > > I would not expect any earthly court to interpret the "caused by" in > the quoted clause to include causation that could not (reasonably be > expected to) be foreseen by the commercial distributor as a result of > his acts or omissions. And if the commercial distributor *could* > foresee that his acts would cause losses for the original author, then > I would expect him to be liable to pay compensate irrespective of what > the license says. I have difficulty thinking of anything a commercial user of software could do that would cause the upstream author to legitimately be sued in the first place--if the problem is really caused by my action, then the author being sued is frivilous almost by definition. I suppose I could cause that through misrepresentation, but I'd expect to be liable in that case anyway (once it found its way back to me). > > (You might get the money back from a countersuit, of course, but you > > might not--and if you have this option available, you might just > > elect to make me pay for it all instead of going back to court.) > > Making the redistributor pay it would probably involve going to court > too. True, though going to court against the redistributor may be a more appealing option than going back to court against, say, IBM--but that's stretching. -- Glenn Maynard
