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From: Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be>
To: Philip McGrath <philip@philipmcgrath.com>,
	Guix Devel <guix-devel@gnu.org>
Cc: "(" <paren@disroot.org>
Subject: Re: FSDG-compatibility of APSL-2.0
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2022 19:13:56 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <5a9202b00b6eabfe3a065d86ca4ccb9044ecbad3.camel@telenet.be> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <a936625d-500b-5112-e77e-28d0b4b608dd@philipmcgrath.com>

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(zimoun pointed out that I didn't actually send this mail, apparently
it never left ‘drafts’.  Anyway, just sending this e-mail for
completeness; unless someone comes with a new insight or something the
discussion appears to be done for now.)

Philip McGrath schreef op do 16-06-2022 om 02:21 [-0400]:
> Still, I'm in favor of the status quo. I think fragmentation over 
> license policies has a significant cost for the community, and this
> does not seem to be sufficiently problematic to be worth a schism.

Maybe, but I'm not aware of any method to revise the decisions of the
FSF.

Philip McGrath schreef op do 16-06-2022 om 02:21 [-0400]:
> I'm not a lawyer, so take this paragraph lease seriously, but I also 
> think the concrete impact is less than it might first seem. We accept 
> choice-of-forum provisions like the one in MPL-2.0 ("Any litigation 
> relating to this License may be brought only in the courts of a 
> jurisdiction where the defendant maintains its principal place of 
> business and such litigation shall be governed by laws of that 
> jurisdiction, without reference to its conflict-of-law provisions.") [8] 
> which would require you to sue Apple in California

I consider this to be a much milder clause than the clause in APSL-2.0:
also IANAL, but what it looks like to me:

1. APSL-2.0: Apple can legally drag you (*) to California to be sue you
   there under California's law and everything that entails.
2. APSL-2.0: Likewise, you can drag Apple to the California to sue
   Apple there.

I don't see any reason to do (2) here.
What I consider problematic here, is (1).

Contrast this to MPL-2.0 (for simplicity, this assumes Apple uses the
MPL, feel free to replace by Mozilla or whatever):

1. If Apple sues you, they have to sue you in _your_ country.
2. If you sue Apple, you have to sue in Apple's country.

This seems rather symmetric to me, and while sometimes I might disagree
with $foreign_country's or $local_country's laws, this seems a rather
reasonable system to me.

(*) unless $your_country's legal system disagrees on this choice of
forum provision.

> We also accept licenses like the GPL that don't have any choice-of-
> forum provisions:
>
> the law of "personal jurisdiction" and venue is complex, but I would
> not be shocked if Apple could sue you in California in this case. My
> impression is that it would be very difficult to require something
> like a "freedom not to litigate in California" (especially so for all
> possible values of "California") without rejecting many 
> currently-accepted licenses.

My problem is not a ‘freedom to not litigate in $foo’, but rather ‘no
cherry-picking jurisdictions to whatever is convenient for limiting the
freedom the most’.

Sure, if it comes to a conflict between party X and Y, the legal system
will need to somehow decide on a forum, but no need for this power
asymmetry.

In this case, MPL-2.0's clause seems acceptable to me, but APSL-2.0's
doesn't.

TBC, if two parties of about equal power choose a forum to avoid
potential future problems, ok, but this doesn't seem to be the case for
the APSL-2.0.

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      parent reply	other threads:[~2022-06-17 17:14 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-06-16  6:21 FSDG-compatibility of APSL-2.0 Philip McGrath
2022-06-16  7:43 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2022-06-16 22:02   ` Philip McGrath
2022-06-17  9:06     ` zimoun
2022-06-17  9:39       ` Maxime Devos
2022-06-17 10:00         ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2022-06-17 17:06           ` Maxime Devos
2022-06-17 20:11             ` Felix Lechner
2022-06-17 21:14               ` Maxime Devos
2022-06-17 14:37         ` zimoun
2022-06-17 15:52           ` Philip McGrath
2022-06-17  9:40       ` Maxime Devos
2022-06-17 17:11 ` Maxime Devos
2022-06-17 17:13 ` Maxime Devos [this message]

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