(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.