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Subject: Re: [ILUG] Interesting article on free software licences
From: "Ciaran Johnston" <cj@nologic.org>
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X-Original-Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 09:43:11 +0100 (BST)
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 09:43:11 +0100 (BST)

David Neary said:
>
> For the francophones among you, this article is a summary of the
> reasons why most free software licences (and the GPL in
> particular) are not valid in France.
>
> http://www.linuxfrench.net/article.php3?id_article=1043
>
> Google translation (hard to read most of the time, but good
> enough to pick up the gist)
>
> http://makeashorterlink.com/?U26B52602
>
> In brief, in an international contract, when mentioning copyright,  you
> must mention under which jurisdiction's laws the copyright
> is applied. French law requires the licence to be available in
> French (the GPL isn't). And French law requires that for a
> contract to be valid, it must not breach existing law. Also under
> French law, the copyright holder automatically retains the right
> to change the licence, which means that French law is in conflict
> with the GPL, which requires authorisation from all authors
> before a licence change is allowed.
>
> Also there's some stuff about French consumer law forbidding sale
> without guarantee of anything, so software delivered as-is
> breaches consumer law in France. But I didn't really follow that.

My French is a bit iffy these days, but if this is true, does it not also
nullify Microsoft, Adobe and WinZip licences amongst most others? These all
claim no liability, no guarantees (M$ say delivered "with all faults", so
at least they are honest).

/Ciaran.


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