Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

CeCILL: La Licence Francaise Du Logiciel Libre

Posted by timothy on from the got-a-different-word-for-everything dept.

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."

2 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. About time by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    GPL translations have always been awkward, they don't translate well into the local legal frameword. This new license is good because it's based on French laws rather than a french interpretation of US laws, and as an added bonus, if such a license is ever challenged in court, judges will take it more seriously if it's home-grown than if it's an "import" license.

    Now, not being a lawyer and all, my question is: can a french developer use the CeCILL license as a drop-in replacement for the GPL? can he ship both licenses in a software product's tarball and consider both licenses equivalent in terms of rights they grant, in each country?

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  2. Re:Differnt languages in different countries by vidarh · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It doesn't work that way. Even if a court decided that the license grant in itself was not legally binding on you, you would be prevented by a legal principle called "estoppel" from suing someone for doing something you have previously claimed they had a right to do.

    Even if the license might in theory legally binding on you, it would be highly improbably that any court would find that a claim by you to have licensed the code under certain terms would not consistute estoppel if you claimed as truth that people could distribute the software under the terms of the GPL.

    In fact, it goes further than that. If you assert that your software is licensed under the GPL, and that by placing the software under the GPL you're allowing people to do Foo with it, then you will be prevented from later suing people for violating the GPL even if Foo is a violation of the license.

    This principle is meant to provide safety that you can rely on statements from someone without needing to have every little detail agreed in writing.

    (The term "estoppel" came to English from French, btw.)

    ObDisclaimer: IANAL