On 2004-07-12 04:32:08 +0100 Wouter Vanden hove wouter.vanden.hove@pandora.be wrote:
"France lends support to new open-source license CeCILL license, compatible with GNU GPL, aims to be better suited for French laws" What does FSFE-supporters think about this?
There are recent discussions on fsfe-france and debian-legal which may interest you, starting at URLs http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/fsfe-france/2004-07/msg00016.html and http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/07/msg00067.html (from http://mjr.towers.org.uk/blog/2004-6.html#cecill )
In general, this seems like a good thing. I have heard from researchers that some are nervous in using a licence written for foreign laws. I assume this is a bigger problem for using a US licence in France, where differences in legal style seem greater than between the US and UK.
That said, some key questions have been raised: * Doesn't specify what GPL it means: Grombat Public Licence compatible too? * Apparently commits the Holder to keep the software available forever? * Forces anyone the Holder sues to be represented in France:
Also contains mild anti-free-software "techies-only" propoganda in the preamble, which I missed on first reading.
Creative Commons has a strong-copyleft license (Share-Alike) which they are translating and adapting to local laws.
No CC licences are free software licences, or even free-software-compatible, so I think we're off-topic there, much as I wish it otherwise.
Why doesn't FSFEurope adopt a same strategy?
Maybe you should cc team or office on just that narrow question, for an official reply. I'm not sure who reads this list and how fully (fx: prepares to be snowed on).
Why would European government or public institutions release their own software under a GPL that is only partially valid in many european countries?
Mindshare, basically, or they might think the valid bits are sufficient. Also, they may have a US entity that they can use to publish it there first, which I think means the GPL would be as fine as for FSF.