Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:
Under the OSL, if you are the Licensor you determine the jurisdiction.
It's your software after all. So if you write and license your software
in Europe to customers anywhere, you can defend your rights in Europe
under European contract law.
This suits me fine when I develop a brand new piece of software.
If you are the licensee, you can demand your rights in a jurisdiction
where the licensor resides or has its primary business. So if you want
to sue a big US company for licensing software to you over the Internet
while you were in your home in Paris, and big US company has registered
to do business in Paris, you can sue big US company in Paris.
I don't think this will pose any problems for me in the near future. However, suppose "big US company" didn't register to do business anywhere in Europe, and just licensed some open source software to me through the Internet, and later decides to change their mind, then how can I defend my rights on anything I did with their software (assuming I didn't do anything illegal)?
Almost every license on the OSI approved list specifies a US jurisdiction. The OSL is specifically intended to be country neutral in that respect. If it isn't, we should make it so. What changes do you suggest?
As long as the OSL does the same thing for me here in the EU as it does in the US, then I'm ok with it. regards, Henry Pijffers -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
