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This is further complicated by the precarious position of copyleft in Germany in particular, and the EU in general. In German basic property law, there are cert

This is further complicated by the precarious position of copyleft in Germany in particular, and the EU in general. In German basic property law, there are certain "rights" of a creator which CANNOT be given away. The German GPL has some interesting workarounds for a number of these rights; mostly they do it by declaring that the GPL is a contract and not a license. You can give away lots of "rights" in a contract I'd you're explicit.... But not quite all of them. Among the problematic clauses is the one that controls the license of derivative works. Another interesting clause is liability, but that's another conversation.

teddyh 11y ago
What in the world is “The German GPL”? As far as I know there is no such thing.
- cdavid 11y ago
  I don't know about German GPL, but you have licenses like CeCILL which could be called "French GPL" I guess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL.
DasIch 11y ago
You can't give away your copyright in Germany but you can give someone an exclusive license to publish, sell or whatever else they might want to do.
- germanier 11y ago
  There are certain rights you can't sign away, even if you wanted to. An example the right to be named as the creator. Simplified, it's not allowed to put the name of some one else on your creation – no matter what the contract says and what you agreed to. Such an agreement can be revoked at any time by the creator. Another important example is severe defacement, which is not allowed. To most known recent case is Berlin's new main railway station which was built without the elaborate ceiling the architect planned due to cost and time constraints. The architect sued and won the case. They later signed a deal. If that hadn't happened, the owner Deutsche Bahn would have had to replace the ceiling with the originally planned version on their own cost.
  - DasIch 11y ago
    Pretending someone else created something is a shitty thing to do anyway. Also the defacement thing is a rather special case. If you'd buy a painting and defaced or burned it, no one would care. I also don't see how it could possibly apply to software or music. It's certainly an interesting case and kind of weird but apart from that not all that important. In practice you can sign away pretty much all of your rights and none of those that you can't sign over really matter when it comes to software. It's not like the GPL is some questionable license either. It's a well established licence and has been tested in German court. Based on the information from this court case it also doesn't appear as if that's in anyway in doubt. The focus is entirely on where the lines should be drawn in this particular case.
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    Those are known as "moral rights". There is nothing in the GPL that references moral rights one way or another.
brianmurphy 11y ago
Harald Welte never seemed to have a problem with Germany when he was actively pursuing GPL violators.

teddyh 11y ago

What in the world is “The German GPL”? As far as I know there is no such thing.

cdavid 11y ago
I don't know about German GPL, but you have licenses like CeCILL which could be called "French GPL" I guess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL.

DasIch 11y ago

You can't give away your copyright in Germany but you can give someone an exclusive license to publish, sell or whatever else they might want to do.

germanier 11y ago
There are certain rights you can't sign away, even if you wanted to. An example the right to be named as the creator. Simplified, it's not allowed to put the name of some one else on your creation – no matter what the contract says and what you agreed to. Such an agreement can be revoked at any time by the creator. Another important example is severe defacement, which is not allowed. To most known recent case is Berlin's new main railway station which was built without the elaborate ceiling the architect planned due to cost and time constraints. The architect sued and won the case. They later signed a deal. If that hadn't happened, the owner Deutsche Bahn would have had to replace the ceiling with the originally planned version on their own cost.
- DasIch 11y ago
  Pretending someone else created something is a shitty thing to do anyway. Also the defacement thing is a rather special case. If you'd buy a painting and defaced or burned it, no one would care. I also don't see how it could possibly apply to software or music. It's certainly an interesting case and kind of weird but apart from that not all that important. In practice you can sign away pretty much all of your rights and none of those that you can't sign over really matter when it comes to software. It's not like the GPL is some questionable license either. It's a well established licence and has been tested in German court. Based on the information from this court case it also doesn't appear as if that's in anyway in doubt. The focus is entirely on where the lines should be drawn in this particular case.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Those are known as "moral rights". There is nothing in the GPL that references moral rights one way or another.

brianmurphy 11y ago

Harald Welte never seemed to have a problem with Germany when he was actively pursuing GPL violators.