jurisdiction and venue

[Ned Lilly]

Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2007 at 10:38:48PM -0400, Russ Nelson wrote:
>> Ned Lilly writes:
>>  > Are you permitted to change the jurisdiction and/or venue in an
>>  > OSI-approved license?  For example, if I wanted to use the new
>>  > CPAL, I see that it is governed by California law, and the venue
>>  > for any litigation would be Santa Clara County.
>>
>> No, you can't change it.  The license author expects their language to
>> be construed according to California law and the District Court that
>> Santa Clara lies in.
> 
> If the license is itself under a free license, I don't see why altering 
> the choice of jurisdiction/venue would be a problem. Of course, changes 
> in legal interpretation might render the license unworkable or impose 
> restrictions that would make it impossible to comply with the OSD. But 
> that's hardly a given.

That would be my instinct as well, Matthew, but I appreciate Russ' response.

If that's the official position of OSI, I fear it's the kind of thing 
that can lead to license proliferation, and lack of adoption of 
OSI-certified licenses.

Why can't the licenses just have jurisdiction and venue as a fill-in, 
like some other items you see in Exhibits and such?  I can see the 
perils of being silent on the question, but I would think that it's not 
unreasonable for a company based in New York, say, to want to choose New 
York law and courts.

Having said that, it's important to us to use an OSI-certified license, 
so we'll roll with it.  But if this is the kind of thing that's of 
interest to anyone else, I'd welcome the chance to talk about it, and 
perhaps revisit the question in future revisions...

Thanks,
Ned