Politics-Free Licence ;)

[Simon Phipps]

On Jun 28, 2007, at 23:46, Chuck Swiger wrote:
>
> Worse for whom?
>
> There's a reason why the GPL makes a great deal of effort to spell  
> out terms that might be assumed in one system of law but might not  
> in other, because they (meaning the FSF and others) want the  
> license to have the same interpretation worldwide.  This goal may  
> not be perfectly achievable because some jurisdictions prevent the  
> disclaimer of warranty, et cetera, but nobody who writes Free  
> Software or OpenSource software *wants* to be sued or deal with  
> related legal crap in a completely foreign jurisdiction to them.

Right.  This we agree about, I think. I'm saying that, in cases where  
the license has not been honed by many global legal minds to have  
layered and nuanced meaning (as the GPLv3 has been, for example), it  
is smart to tell the reader what system of law you had in mind when  
you were writing. That way, all readers can see what the license  
means and not have to gain local knowledge of the case law and  
semantics on a use-by-use basis.

Thus, I assert that /either/ there should be a fixed statement of the  
system of law assumed by the license, or none at all. Encouraging the  
language of the license to be variably interpreted unsettles lots of  
people (I met some of them at DebConf last weekend for example).

Of course, as others on this thread have pointed out, what actually  
happens when one finally reaches court may be unaffected by all this!

> If someone wants to sue me over software which I've made public for  
> everyone to share, modify, and use, the least they can do is show  
> up and do so in the courtroom in my neighborhood, rather than  
> halfway around the world.

This is choice of venue, and is a different topic. I disagree with  
your interpretation of what a choice of a legal venue in license  
means (I think the SocialText folks have got it right in their most  
recent submission, FWIW), but I do feel that more people will be more  
happy with a license that makes no attempt to choose a venue.

S.

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