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CeCILL: La Licence Francaise Du Logiciel Libre
News for nerds writes "Researchers at three French government-funded research organizations revealed the new Open-Source license, known as CeCILL (English .pdf here), which they say is compatible with the FSF's GPL. CeCILL is intended to make free software more compatible with French law in two areas where it differs significantly from U.S. law: copyright and product liability. I, for one, welcome our nouvelle overlord of freedom."
Different legal system, so you need to adapt the license for it.
It's funny (as in sad "funny") that americans seem to think that others dislike them a lot more than people really do. Of course, as some parts of the US have acted out on that misrepresentation the past few years, they are at serious risk of making it self-fulfilling.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I suspect they just want a "GPL" of their own that doesn't come from those "stupid Americains" ...
Okay, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but...
Yes, you're right: many french people do think "stupide Americians". Most software developers don't however, simply because they deal with other developers from all countries in the world on a regular basis. But if a Franco-French GPL is what it takes to further the cause of free software in the eyes of the general population and in courts, why not? I'm all for it.
This is about developing free software, not about your stupid france-vs-america bull. If you can't talk about developing free software without communicating your totally unrelated biases, then please don't.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I consider this part problematic. After all, when you start downloading the software, you may not be able to detect the licence, and therefore how should yoi agree to it? IMHO a license should never be assumed to be agreed on until you had at least the chance to see it. Moreover, what about dual-licensed software? Say, a software comes both under this license and under the GPL, and I want to agree to the GPL only?
OTOH I like the following part:
Note that there's no limitation of that clause to software derived from the licensed one, which IMHO means as soon as I accepted this license for a specific piece of software, I'm entitled to use all the licensor's patents covering that code freely in any project, even those not derived from this (i.e. basically the licensor is completely opening up the patents used in that code). However IANAL, and also I fear that this will be refined before any real software is licensed with this.
(BTW, it sucks not having Copy&paste enabled in that PDF)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I'm not French but I'm getting tired of the jokes that are made each time something about France is published here. The French reading this site are often just coders that share our same spirit of OS and Linux and such.
The jokes are often funny and the criticism is okay. Just not on every single subject that touches France.
Don't say this aloud, but the GPL is not worth the bits it's written on in France. The FSF states very good reasons not to translate the GPL in other languages, but in France if a contract is not in French, it's not worth anything. There is a law about this, maybe someone will provide a link (sorry my French is not that good).
I was told this by people that have been working on the subject---I help out the KDE-i18n-it team, and the issue of translating the GPL surfaces every now and then, and one point made is what I reported here.
I would really like to know whether this separate licence you mention is in French, any chances you find it?
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I don't think so. The GPL demands no discrimination is applied on those who may use it. What you propose is discrimination (although arguably positive discrimination). IANAL.
What's interesting about this licence is that is has been written by institutions close from the french government - the CEA are strongly bound to it because they're the ones in charge, AFAIK, of both military and civilian nuclear technology, and the CNRS and INRIA are well-known national research institutes.
IANAL, but I'm quite sure such a licence is something that may potentially be taken seriously by courts, at least in France. If only because of its apparently complex french lawyerspeak... And because of its origins, probably way more serious from the perspective of a judiciary system than a licence written by a group of idealists in a country where laws aren't the same, and in a different language. As some more or less explicitly pointed here, licence translations aren't that good - I guess the potentially ambiguous nature and abusive lexical complexity of lawyerspeak aren't something that is easily translateable.
Now, there is something in the press release that may make some cringe. Here's a fairly literal translation of a snippet in this release :
This licence is the first of a family intended to develop itself along principles characterizing other very used licences
At the end of this sentence is written a small superscript 2 that sends to a footnote whose meaning goes as follows :
Namely the LGPL (Lesser General Public Licence), QPL (Q Public Licence) and BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) licences.
I'll let you ponder on whether BSD's a free licence...
- Hadriven
Oddly enough, because of Slashdot, I know much more about US copyright law than about EU/Dutch law (I am Dutch). So I could be wrong.
But anyway, if the GPL isn't valid for some reason, then I would think that it is just void, no matter where you are. And yes, then the Berne convention applies - you have to get permission from the author to copy any copyrighted work. There's no reason why it would suddenly be free for all, just because there's an invalid license associated with it.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Well as a French, I agree that some people are jealous of the fact that some americans are very rich, but French don't hate Americans because of their fatness, make fun yes (and even not too loud because we have also the problem..), hate no.
Anyway, the "hate" is more linked to Americans being perceived as being arrogant: "American's imperialism" is the major reason.
The recent war with Irak is a good example of this domination in action: America wants to go to war with Irak, show unconvincing proof to NATA and when told that these proof are not convincing enough, goes to war alone..
That is what French people hate about Americans.
Just what we need: more politics and less quality code. There is no freedom with fragmentation. Microsoft will continue to dominate the computer industry until opponents try to unify
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What strikes me in this licence is the way the claim to be compatible with the GPL. Essentially, it say that the CeCILL licence can be "transformed" into the GPL if a CeCILL licenced software uses of includes a GPL piece of software.
...
This seems somewhat weird as it seems to imply that all CeCILL licence code can easily be transformed into GPL, thus removing all the specificies and french-law related subtelties of the original licence
As have been stated over and over again, the GPL gives rights, it does not remove them. In other words, if it is indeed non-valid, due to language related reasons or other, then the source is simply a document with copyright applied to it. No need to get all nervous and paranoid.
Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)
I think the whole arrogance thing is overblown. Yes Parisian waiters are arrogant - you expect that. But by and large they're just regular people trying to get by in the world just like most people. You find some friendly people, some @$$holes. Same everywhere you go.
It's no different to American tourists in London. The knee-jerk reaction is that they're just a bunch of fat, loud, obnoxious Yanks. But I bet some of them are really nice friendly people!
No, that wasn't a troll. Don't mod it as such.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
By the same token you could say that Americans deserve the hatred that comes their way. And many would agree - the impression that is prevalent in most countries outside America seems to be that you guys are terminally superficial, heavyhanded beyond any anything merited by the situation, infinitely selfish, wasteful and equipped with the narrowest tunnel vision know to mankind.
But would it be reasonable to say that 'this is the way Americans are' just because your government and military are like that?
Remember - you guys started on the nonsense with 'freedom fries', 'surrender monkeys' and 'France's mini-me'. You never heard any French officials blurt out that kind of drivel. Probably too arrogant to stoop that low.
'Arrogant' is a remark I hear all my life about Americans and French alike. What a load of crock. There's what - ~300 M people in these two countries and all of them are arrogant? Your comment, on the other hand, makes you (at best) ignorant.
13.2 In the absence of an out-of-court settlement within (2) months as from their occurrence, and unless emergency proceeding are necessary, the disagreements or disputes shall be referred to the Paris Courts having jurisdiction, by the first party to take action.
Does this mean companies can rob French OSS, and then force the creator to haul his ass to Paris to stop them? Or dows it just mean he has to get his ass to a fench law court? Either way some OSS writers may not be able to travel.
Also considering the agreement requires the matter to be taken to a French court with jurisdiction, won't that mean that US, UK or other compnaies who breach it won't be held liable as they were outside the juristiction of any French court?
Vive le difference.
May the Maths Be with you!
Personally, I'd rather people continued to contribute changes to open source projects because they considered the existence of good open source software to be beneficial to themselves, rather than because they were forced to by the GPL, but then I still have some faith left in humanity.
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As a Frenchman myself, I have to agree. When I was in high school in Germany, we had French school books (designed by French people to teach French to foreigners) that were basically saying France is not only about pleasure of all kinds, it also is a major hi-tech nation
They went on showing major French tech achievements: the TGV (French bullet train), the Airbus, and the Ariane rocket.
Not a single word was spoken about the fact that THREE OTHER NATIONS were involved in the Airbus project, not to mention SIXTEEN in the Ariane project.
On that very day, it finally dawned on me why so many people hated us and yet most of us didn't even know it.
Or consider the French European policy. The French government has grown so used to treating the EU as a modern-day colonial empire that it was shocked when most European governments turned their back to it at the first chance they could get - namely supporting the Iraq war, even though it'd mean contempting international law and alienating voters.
OTOH, quite the same thing can be said about the USA. I guess it is related to the fact both countries consider themselves as models to be followed.
Personally, as another islander, I'd have to say that in my experience, a fair percentage of the population of Paris are arrogant bastards.
But then, I'd also say that a fair percentage of Londoners are obnoxious wankers with their own share of arrogance. Not for nothing do the residents of London enjoy a certain reputation around the rest of the country.
I wouldn't call either group representative of the general population of their countries though. Most of the French people I've met here or in France have been genuinely nice, friendly people. Same goes for the 'fat loud obnoxious yanks' mentioned earlier - most Americans are decent interesting people.
There just seems to be something about living in large cities that destroys people's consideration for others. Nothing to do with the country...
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However I have witnessed how American tourists often gets treated both in the UK and in France, often because they are perceived as loud, obnoxious and entirely without manners. Sometimes it might be true, but just as often it is a case of cultural mismatches.
I think the main reasons Americans apparently don't see people in the UK as arrogant too is that the French are amazing at making their dislike for something extremely in your face, combined with larger cultural differences.
The British on the other hand will, when offended, either use insults that the average American don't quite "get", or will smear it on thick with dry sarcasm that tends to pass straight over the heads of the stereotypical obnoxious US tourist...
These kind of cultural mismatches have nothing to do with peoples real attitudes. For some other examples - when I started dealing with Americans and to some extent other English speaking people in conjunction with work years ago I realised that I would often be perceived as rude because of the way I was used to speak.
In Norwegian you would often be very direct and informal and you use very few phrases that would be considered normal courtesy in other languages. It's very easy to carry artefacts like that over when you speak a foreign language. When Norwegians are being taught French and German it's drilled into your head that you need to watch it because you can really piss some (particularly older people) off, but for English it's often considered a lot less important, possibly because the differences are a lot more subtle.
I still find it weird when people address me "sir" in shops in London for instance, while using the equivalent term in Norwegian would either get you a weird stare or people would possibly take it as an insult (as it could imply you were suggesting they were being snotty and arrogant).
In the same vein my fiance (who is Nigerian) finds it extremely awkward to address my mother and grandparents by first name, being used to having to use courtesy terms or at least last name, while again either would be considered at best weird, at worst rude in Norway (because you'd be indicating that you're distancing yourself from someone, which is a sign of respect many places but would these days more often be interpreted as dislike or disinterest in Norway where the norm is to use firstnames in almost all situations).
One of the other mismatches I often come across where I've both thought people were being rude and had people consider me rude is the (mostly US) thing with asking someone how things are going without expecting a response. Before I knew, I considered it extremely rude when I'd meet an American who'd ask me how things were going, and then keep walking past me without waiting for a response. At the same time, I soon realised that I'd sometimes be preceived as rude for starting to talk about how I was doing instead of answering by asking how they were doing.
Software is not ice cream.
1. If I give you the right to use, modify, and redistribute my code, I do not thereby lose the right to use, modify, and redistribute my code. This is not true of ice cream, as you pointed out, one of the many ways in which ice cream is a really bad analogy for software.
2. Without applying any license whatsoever, any code I write is protected under the Berne Convention and local copyright laws (in my case, U.S.). These copyright laws give you no rights to copy, modify or redistribute my code, with the very narrow exception of fair use - you may quote very limited portions in a review, critique, or scholarly article.
3. The GPL gives, in addition, further rights, to copy, modify and redistribute my code (if I license it under the GPL). The GPL places some restrictions only on these further rights . The GPL does not place any restriction on any rights you already have under copyright law. For example, the GPL does not place any restrictions on your existing fair use rights. I defy you to find any restriction in the GPL on rights you already have under copyright law . Good luck; you won't find any.
4. Conclusion: You have a profound misunderstanding of what rights you have to the use of my copyrighted work . You don't have the right to copy it in whole. You may only copy very small portions, and then only for the purpose of review, critique, teaching, or scholarly debate. You do not have the right to use my copyrighted work without my express permission, usually for a fee, which I, not you, determine. You do not have the right to redistribute my work. The GPL grants you these additional rights, but places some restrictions on only these additional rights. The GPL places no restrictions whatsoever on any rights you already have under copyright law without the GPL.
You are mistaken on this point. The FSF does not interpret the GPL to mean anything about linkage. The FSF interprets copyright law as saying that linkage constitutes copyright derivation. You may disagree, but that doesn't change the fact that the GPL is solely a defense against charges of copyright violation!
If you violate the GPL, then the GPL no longer applies to you. But accepting the GPL is voluntary. If what you do with the GPL'd code is not violating copyright law, then the GPL is irrelevant, and you can argue that you never accepted it. If what you do with the GPL'd code does violate copyright law, then your only possible defense is that the GPL granted you the right to do what you did (which is only true if you adhered to its terms). But the GPL can never take away rights, by definition, because it exists solely as a defense against charges of copyright violation. If there is no possibility of copyright infringement, the GPL is moot.