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A very lovely article, I enjoyed it very much since it gives insight into the "syntax" of legal documents in the US. This article brought up a point I find ver

A very lovely article, I enjoyed it very much since it gives insight into the "syntax" of legal documents in the US. This article brought up a point I find very interesting. The MIT license (and a bunch of other licenses as well) are very US-oriented when it came to their writing, provisions, etc. I'd love to read a similar article exploring licenses like these from a, say, European point of view. Would the same constructs hold up in a German court, for example. What language is missing or superfluous?

Iv 10y ago
I can talk for France. I used to work in a lab depending from the CNRS and arriving there I learned about the French version of the GPL, BSD and LGPL, the CeCILL familly (CeCILL-A, -B or -C respectively) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL ) They claim compatibility with GPL, BSD and LGPL and also that CeCILL was necessary for valid open source licenses in France. That made me raise eyebrows on many levels: - Does it mean the GPL/BSD/LGPL is unenforceable in France? - Does it mean the CeCILL is unenforceable in other countries? - The CeCILL allows to relicense a work under a future revision of the license. I know some GPL projects do that, I personally am extremely suspicious of this possibility. I raised these points but never got good answers from law specialists. The guys I could reach were specialized in "intellectual property valorization" and actually did not know anything about open source. They also made me realize in the french version of the law, the notion that copyright protects a source code is extremely disputable: In France you can't patent or copyright an idea, and numbers and mathematical formulas are recognized as ideas. It is accepted that a computer algorithm is equivalent to a mathematical formula. Ergo, in a source code, you can't protect an algorithm but an implementation. That is, as I understood when pushing a bit more, variable names and whitespace structure are the only copyrightable things in a program. My understanding is that an obfuscater or a code formatter would likely remove any copyright claim from a source code when it comes to french laws. I wish we had an actually active Pirate Party or EFF to try push the limits over that nonsense.
detaro 10y ago
AFAIK German courts specifically have hold up the GPL, but there are some interesting points with other open-source: - CC0 exists because in German (and other countries') laws the only way for something to become public domain is expiry of copyright. CC0 puts it in clearer legal terms that you wish to give up all rights you can give up and not make use of all others. - German law added a "Linux-paragraph" that made it clear that if you grant usage rights to everyone, you can relinquish the right for "appropriate" payment, which added legal security. (Otherwise, if I perform work for you and you don't pay me, I could attempt to force you to pay a fair rate for my work, after the fact) - other licenses might not be as well-tested, and I've seen code offered under "MIT license translated and adapted to German legal concepts" or things like that. Which of course doesn't exactly make it easier to use in other contexts...

Iv 10y ago

I can talk for France. I used to work in a lab depending from the CNRS and arriving there I learned about the French version of the GPL, BSD and LGPL, the CeCILL familly (CeCILL-A, -B or -C respectively) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL ) They claim compatibility with GPL, BSD and LGPL and also that CeCILL was necessary for valid open source licenses in France. That made me raise eyebrows on many levels: - Does it mean the GPL/BSD/LGPL is unenforceable in France? - Does it mean the CeCILL is unenforceable in other countries? - The CeCILL allows to relicense a work under a future revision of the license. I know some GPL projects do that, I personally am extremely suspicious of this possibility. I raised these points but never got good answers from law specialists. The guys I could reach were specialized in "intellectual property valorization" and actually did not know anything about open source. They also made me realize in the french version of the law, the notion that copyright protects a source code is extremely disputable: In France you can't patent or copyright an idea, and numbers and mathematical formulas are recognized as ideas. It is accepted that a computer algorithm is equivalent to a mathematical formula. Ergo, in a source code, you can't protect an algorithm but an implementation. That is, as I understood when pushing a bit more, variable names and whitespace structure are the only copyrightable things in a program. My understanding is that an obfuscater or a code formatter would likely remove any copyright claim from a source code when it comes to french laws. I wish we had an actually active Pirate Party or EFF to try push the limits over that nonsense.

detaro 10y ago

AFAIK German courts specifically have hold up the GPL, but there are some interesting points with other open-source: - CC0 exists because in German (and other countries') laws the only way for something to become public domain is expiry of copyright. CC0 puts it in clearer legal terms that you wish to give up all rights you can give up and not make use of all others. - German law added a "Linux-paragraph" that made it clear that if you grant usage rights to everyone, you can relinquish the right for "appropriate" payment, which added legal security. (Otherwise, if I perform work for you and you don't pay me, I could attempt to force you to pay a fair rate for my work, after the fact) - other licenses might not be as well-tested, and I've seen code offered under "MIT license translated and adapted to German legal concepts" or things like that. Which of course doesn't exactly make it easier to use in other contexts...