[ILUG] looking for linux software people

[John P. Looney]

On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 01:49:39PM +0000, Ronan Waide mentioned:
> On December 31, valen at tuatha.org said:
> >  Do remember, that under EU law, any contract deemed "unfair" by a jury
> > can be struck out. And I doubt you'll find a majority of people think such
> > a think is remotely fair.
> 
> I'm a little unclear on where and when EU law comes into operation, to
> be honest, which is why I'm very wary about contracts (my current
> contract is in actual honest-to-goodness English. thanks,
> boss!). 

 The way it works is that;
    a) Irish law is supposed to reflect the word and the spirit of EU law
    b) If you feel it doesn't, you head off to the EU court of justice.

 An example of this was the repeal of the anti-homosexuality in the
nineties. Basically, people here said "er, this irish law is crap", and
took a trip to Brussels. Brussels agreed, told the Irish government
"Change it ASAP, or we'll fine you many millions of..currency units of
your choice".

 An example of one of the first tests of the fairness in contract law was
the Microsoft vs. Sun. Sun's original Solaris used some boot code from
Xenix, in exchange for a royalty for each copy of solaris X86 sold. I
think this was when Sun were developing their Sun 386 (big intel-based
machine, with nasty sharp 5" fans).

 Ten years later (I think around 1996 or something), Sun said "er, we
don't have any MS code left in Solaris, I think we should end the
contract". MS said "Nope, we thought of that, and even if you don't have
any code belonging to us, you still have to pay". Sun took them to the EU
courts, and had the contract overturned for all copies of Solaris sold in
the EU. I think then MS voluntarily let the contract go for all other
destinations, when Sun threatened just to sell Solaris through Europe.

 I should point out that this is all from memory of things that happened a
good few years back, so it may all be made up :)

John