** Matthew Garrett :: > Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Scripsit Matthew Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > >> But that's already possible. The majority (all?) of licenses > >> that we ship don't prevent me from being sued arbitrarily. > > > > The majority (all!) of license we ship do not demand that you > > agree *in advance* to waive your usual protections against > > arbitrary lawsuits in exotic courts. > > Why does the "exotic courts" aspect actually make any significant > difference? Are you honestly asserting that the cost of me > travelling to, say, Finland is going to be large compared to the > costs of hiring a lawyer to defend me?
Both are impossible costs to me. But, in my home jurisdiciton I have the option of the free legal counsel my court will appoint to me. > > >> The only difference that choice of venue makes is that it > >> potentially increases the cost for me. > > > > By orders of magnitude. > > I'd like to see those figures. > > >> Within the UK alone, I can end up paying fairly large travel > >> fees to deal with a court case. > > > > It may be that you do not have any concept of "home court" > > within the UK. That does not mean that the rest of the world's > > Debian users should be expected to suffer from that fault. > > If I'm living in the Scottish highlands, that doesn't help a great > deal. > > >>> I'll agree here ! Then why leave easy targets to lawsuit > >>> sharks ? > > > >> How do we protect against that currently? > > > > We protect against leaving easy target by considering software > > non-free if its licence demands that you position yourself as an > > easier target that you would be without the license. > > Any license that imposes any restrictions on me leaves me an > easier target than I would be without the license - it's much > easier to find an excuse to sue someone over a piece of GPLed > software than a piece of BSD licensed code. It's my opinion that the GPL is the least-free yet still-free (*) license. Anything with more restrictions than the GPL makes you an _easier_ target to the sharks, so anything with more restrictions is non-free. Bt this is just *my* opinion. (*) provided clause 8 is not invoked. -- HTH, Massa -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
