How Sun's Java got into Debian
How Sun's Java got into Debian
Posted May 25, 2006 13:04 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)Parent article: How Sun's Java got into Debian
> even then, the answer only applies to one jurisdiction.
Really? The license explicitly states that any action concerning the license will be covered by Californian or US federal law.
Posted May 26, 2006 21:08 UTC (Fri)
by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
[Link] (2 responses)
The more interesting clause, which wasn't meantioned at all in the article) is the one where Debian indemnifies Sun from any claim arising out of the Debian distributed version. So I imagine something like:
Company X: Oops, the JVM died on us, causing us millions in losses, lets sue Sun, see if we can get anything back.
Arguing the PR department will prevent this seems silly to me. It's the lawyers job to minimise risk and they'd be stupid not to use the above tactic to make a lawsuit go away...
Posted May 27, 2006 0:33 UTC (Sat)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 5, 2006 21:38 UTC (Mon)
by wookey (guest, #5501)
[Link]
Yeah, but you're assuming that clause is enforcable too, which is debatable.How Sun's Java got into Debian
Sun Lawyer: Interesting idea, what OS are you using?
Company X: Err, Debian?
Sun Lawyer: Cool, they idemnified us, you'll have to sue them.
Debian: ????
A legal technical correction: indemnity doesn't work that way. Company X still sues Sun; Sun then sues Debian (assuming Debian is a suable legal entity such as a corporation) for whatever Company X wins from Sun.
How Sun's Java got into Debian
Debian is not a legal entity. It has representative legal entities in various juristictions to look after (parts of) its money (SPI in the US, FFII in Europe, The Debian-UK Society in the UK), but Debian itself doesn't really have a legal existence you could sue. How Sun's Java got into Debian