[ILUG] Interesting article on free software licences

[David Neary]

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.

Anyway, interesting article. I'd suggest that there are lots of
other countries out there where licences like this don't hold.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
       David Neary,
    Marseille, France
  E-Mail: bolsh at gimp.org