Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com wrote:
If there is no copyright, the GPL becomes completely ineffectual, AFAIK. The whole GPL system is based on copyright. The idea is, you've giving freedoms to people, but restricting/ensuring the freedoms that they pass on. For you to be able to do such a thing, you need a legal mechanism to impose your will - something that they cannot get out of (unless they don't use the software ;). Copyright provides such a mechanism: it allows the GPL to say "This is the property of the author. To be allowed to use this, you must follow this code of conduct". If there is no mechanism, the GPL is unenforceable..
My point exactly. Maybe I should have posed my original question differently. let me rephrase:
Is there an exact equivalent to the us-american "copyright" in each of the countries of Europe (side-note: what "europe" are we talking about? Only the countries of the EU or the "physical" Europe?)? If there is no exact equivalent, what is the closest thing and does it guarantee that the GPL holds and is enforcable? If there is no equivalent, and things are in general rather different (law-wise), does the GPL hold? Would it need to be rephrased?
I may sound paranoid here, but I could imagine companies using free code to produce closed-source software, _if they can_, meaning if there are loopholes in the GPL that don't hold for <insert your country here>-law.
Cheers,
-Jan