[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Symbol Grounding and Running Code: Is XML Really Extensib
You read it; you negotiated; you settled on agreeable terms. Seems reasonable. May seem silly to you. Apparently it wasn't silly to them and therefore, you negotiated. That is standard business; you took exception and they wanted your service enough to accept your exception. I see nothing FUDDY about that. I see a mature business. If you had told them to take a flying leap, I would doubt your business acumen. Had you signed up to an unacceptable requirement, I would doubt your business acumen. Had you not agreed to indemnify your own work, I would doubt your honor. All I require is that those making offers to my company do the same. That includes Microsoft, Red Hat, or any other vendor providing us tools. You are fudding with extreme examples. Indemnity is not a shiny new word. What is boggling is how many here didn't even understand the meaning of it, and how many others aren't willing to go forward with discussions for means of mitigating the risks made very evident by IBM vs SCO, the EULA, the GPL, and so on. That makes me doubt their commitment to this business and to the shared welfare of those that must work together. If you have a problem with that, we must agree to disagree respecfully or not. There are no semantics in markup except what we put there in the running code. It is the relationship of the markup and what it can provide as proof and the running code which is indemnified on its own merit that we should explore. Perhaps we will discover that there are ways and means to manage the risks in common and by more honorable means than EULA and GPL. len From: Uche Ogbuji [mailto:uche.ogbuji@f...] > clbullar@i... (Bullard, Claude L (Len)) writes: > >Here's the deal, my darlings: we will soon refuse to accept > >your risks and your precocious but adolescent approach to > >risk management. > > If that's what you need to do, fine. I think it's utterly to your loss > and your customers' loss, but that's up to you and to them to evaluate. > > It's not my job to tell everyone how to process their data, nor do I > plan to indemnify anyone, nor do I think handing much of that > responsibility to supposedly wise standards bodies is wise. Interestingly enough, just yesterday we signed a contract with a client. In the original draft was a clause requiring us to indemnify them against the eventual heat death of the Universe, it seemed, and specifically against IP claims relating to our work. I didn't tell them to take a flying leap in just such terms, but I did tell them quite firmly that we would indemnify them only against our errors and ommissions, which is what our insurance covers (and which contract law provides for anyway without a silly indemnity clause). According to Len's reasoning, one would think they'd have told us to take a flying leap of our own. But no, there was no fuss. They amended the clause and we moved on. Look: customers have been trying to get outrageous indemnity clauses into contracts since time immemorial. Industry pressures sometimes work in their favor for a while, then nasty cases of unfairness lead to clauses in state law against silly indemnity clauses, and more awareness among vendors over what indemnity clauses to reject. It's like any other contracting issue and the SCO vs. IBM circus did not introduce any new wrinkle anywhere except perhaps to pundits who hadn't really heard of indemnity before (because as pundits they don't have to worry about contract wrangling) and all of a sudden found a new buzzword in an unexpected place. Len, you surprise me because I know you deal with contracts, yet you treat "indemnity" as a shiny new word you can use to dazzle anyone who disagrees with you on such completely unrelated topics as the role of semantics in markup. I agree with Simon. If you refuse to accept our "approach to risk management", then we won't be doing business. Your loss. Luckily there are enough people out there who just want fair commerce.
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