On Slashdot it stated that in Germany GPL isn't legal. Is this true? http://www.vsi.de/inhalte/aktuell/studie_final.pdf http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/07/02/0245228.shtml?tid=117&tid=99
And if so what legal work should be done to make it legal. If somebody knows if any resaerch has be done in Belgium I would welcome it and try to get a new law in act that make GPL very wel protected.
Onno
Could someone provide me with an english abstract of the issues ?
In europe the only issue I've found has to do with the "moral" right to withdraw a work from distribution. And even in that case, nobody was able to answer me on what happens to derived works on such an event.
Anyway, this is not supposed to have nothing to do with the GPL, because the "moral" rights are law, and GPL is an author's authorisation, not law. The ooonly issue is with the 4 freedoms, not the GPL in itself.
A Qua, 2003-07-02 às 11:50, Onno Timmerman escreveu:
On Slashdot it stated that in Germany GPL isn't legal. Is this true? http://www.vsi.de/inhalte/aktuell/studie_final.pdf http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/07/02/0245228.shtml?tid=117&tid=99
And if so what legal work should be done to make it legal. If somebody knows if any resaerch has be done in Belgium I would welcome it and try to get a new law in act that make GPL very wel protected.
Onno
Discussion mailing list Discussion@fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
|| On Wed, 02 Jul 2003 12:50:54 +0200 || Onno Timmerman onno.timmerman@s-p-a.be wrote:
ot> On Slashdot it stated that in Germany GPL isn't legal. ot> Is this true?
No.
The study they are referring to was paid by the VSI, a lobbying group for proprietary software and it is clearly based on very weak understanding of Free Software.
It for instance claims the SCSL was an "accepted Free Software license" and makes the typical beginners mistake of confusing Free Software, Shareware and Freeware.
There is a lot of better-researched studies clearly coming to the conclusion that the GPL is valid even if the clauses regarding warranty and liability are replaced by standard rulings due to German customer protection laws.
There will probably be some public statements about it soon.
One would wish that Slashdot had investigated the story before publishing it or at least asked someone who knew about the issues.
Regards, Georg
Is there a relation or communication between FSF Europe and ifrOSS? http://www.ifross.de/ There are some publications there, even in English.
Aren't there laws in some countries that require that the conditions on using a product needs to be in the official language of that country, so that customers understand those conditions if they buy the product?
Wouldn't this create a need for *official* translations of the GPL to German, French,... ?
Wouter Vanden Hove http://www.opencursus.be
Op wo 02-07-2003, om 13:15 schreef Georg C. F. Greve:
|| On Wed, 02 Jul 2003 12:50:54 +0200 || Onno Timmerman onno.timmerman@s-p-a.be wrote:
ot> On Slashdot it stated that in Germany GPL isn't legal. ot> Is this true?
No.
The study they are referring to was paid by the VSI, a lobbying group for proprietary software and it is clearly based on very weak understanding of Free Software.
It for instance claims the SCSL was an "accepted Free Software license" and makes the typical beginners mistake of confusing Free Software, Shareware and Freeware.
There is a lot of better-researched studies clearly coming to the conclusion that the GPL is valid even if the clauses regarding warranty and liability are replaced by standard rulings due to German customer protection laws.
There will probably be some public statements about it soon.
One would wish that Slashdot had investigated the story before publishing it or at least asked someone who knew about the issues.
Regards, Georg
|| On 02 Jul 2003 17:19:04 +0200 || Wouter Vanden Hove wouter.vanden.hove@pandora.be wrote:
wvh> Is there a relation or communication between FSF Europe and wvh> ifrOSS?
Yes.
In fact you can find examples of past cooperations at
http://fsfeurope.org/documents/reports/es-2003.en.html http://fsfeurope.org/projects/fla/
wvh> Aren't there laws in some countries that require that the wvh> conditions on using a product needs to be in the official wvh> language of that country, so that customers understand those wvh> conditions if they buy the product?
Yes.
Of course there is always room to argue whether a customer had an adequate chance to take notice. Inofficial translations are quite useful in this regard already.
wvh> Wouldn't this create a need for *official* translations of the wvh> GPL to German, French,... ?
That would indeed be useful.
But it is more complicated than it seems as every translation would easily constitute its own license, potentially creating trouble due to license incompatibilities between Free Software projects in different countries -- so it needs to be considered with great care.
So don't expect this to happen soon, it is not impossible we'll find a solution for this in the future, however.
Regards, Georg
On Wed, 2003-07-02 at 11:50, Onno Timmerman wrote:
On Slashdot it stated that in Germany GPL isn't legal. Is this true? http://www.vsi.de/inhalte/aktuell/studie_final.pdf http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/07/02/0245228.shtml?tid=117&tid=99 And if so what legal work should be done to make it legal. If somebody knows if any resaerch has be done in Belgium I would welcome it and try to get a new law in act that make GPL very wel protected.
From what I could understand from a (bad) translation of an article at Heise, the legality dubiousness seemed pretty dubious to me. It seemed to rely on responsability of the developers.
My questions are: Isn't copyright holder responsability _always_ a fact? With typical proprietary software companies, the official copyright holder is usually the company. The article mentions developers, but I'd guess that that is only because _they_ are the copyright holders and not some company (phew).
The GNU GPL and LGPL licenses are, by several orders of intergalactic magnitude, far less restrictive than most non-free licenses. If a licence such as the GNU GPL or LGPL couldn't be enforced, what about all the others that add restrictions to normal copyright law?
What happens when a license is non valid in Germany? It would seem to me that if a license is invalid then you have no right to the copy you have, but IANAL.
Regards, Rui
Onno Timmerman wrote:
And if so what legal work should be done to make it legal. If somebody knows if any resaerch has be done in Belgium I would welcome it and try to get a new law in act that make GPL very wel protected.
It appears that in the music scene the law would already create precedent allowing the GPL style contract. In particular, we had to deal with GEMA to release a new CD, and we learned a few things about their contracts with their members that *may* be at odds with some points of this legal analysis (I'm working from the translation bits since I can't read German well enough).
With a GEMA member contract you assign exclusive rights to your creative works to GEMA. The terms of these rights are very clear, and although GEMA has found itself in court a few times in this regards, the general system seems to stand.
Point 1: The article suggests you may only assign "use rights" to those uses of the work that are presently known. GEMA has recently enacted new guidelines and regulations dictating the use of their member's repetoire on the Internet. If this limitation of "present uses" is correct, then I would assume GEMA would need to get an contract extensions from every member authorizing it.
Point 2: The article mentions you cannot assign copyrights, this is the case in other countries as well (Canada as example). In the GEMA contract you don't assign any of these rights, you assign the right to royalty collection (which is an alienable right). Under the GPL you are also not assigning any copyrights, you are assigning a distribution right mainly (which is still alienable in Germany). Perhaps the wording could be clarified in the GPL towards alienable/inalienable rights and exactly what is being consented to. I do assume however that if GEMA is able to get away with blanket exclusive rights assignments in the situation of commerical exploitation, then the GPL should be able to assert similar conditions.
Point 3: Contributory liability. CD Audio Carriers are effectively derivative works from musicians recordings, which are derivative works of the composers/lyricists. If a record label put a protection device on the CD that harmed your player/computer, it seems hard to believe that the original composers, or even musicians, could somehow be liable for this damage (this even in a case where the entire chain of contribution involved financial gain, whereas in the GPL it probably does not).
These two points should be a starting reference for more research (of which I can't do since my German doesn't allow me to get any further). The parallel to GEMA is quite important though, since the restricted distribution of music is made by the same means as the restriction of software distribution: copyright laws.