[lsb-discuss] LSB conf call notes for 2008-07-30

Theodore Tso tytso at mit.edu
Mon Aug 11 11:14:20 PDT 2008


On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 01:40:51PM -0400, R P Herrold wrote:
>> If they try to sue Sun, you promise to defend Sun.
>
> and that alone is enough to 'kill the deal' from my point of view.  
> Certainly CentOS carries no insurance against such a risk to pay such 
> defense costs; nor, I suspect does Debian

Under the circumstanes where a liticant might sue Sun, they can also
sue CentOS directly.  If you're not prepared for that eventuality,
then you shouldn't be in the business of distributing a distribution.
So yes, the exposure is real, but it was real with or without the TCK
license and its indemnification clause.  As such, I have trouble
taking your concerns seriously.

Do you have an scenario in mind where both (a) the indemnification
clause would apply, and (b) the situation would be worse because of
the indemnification clause?  One that would justify your claims that
this is a real issue?

As I said, the FSF has requested people who contribute code to FSF
projects to sign a very similar indemnification clause, and I don't
see a huge amount of outcry amongst open source developers about said
clause.  Somehow, people are still contributing to the various FSF
projects (gcc, glibc, et. al) despite the request for indemnification.
So maybe all of the FSF developers in the world are missing something
that you alone see.  Why don't you help us (and them) understand it?

Best regards,

						- Ted



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