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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."
Slashdot is too franco-centric!
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
... with some delicious Freedom Fries.
Also, FSF Europe and the EC recently colaborated on a European trademark license for free software (which basically says that the trademark is allowed to be used only if the software is not sold together with non-free software).
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Just in time for European Software Patents to make it redundant :)
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
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.
It's nice to see that someone is making Open Source -- or should that be Logiciel Lisible Libre? -- "official". If this licence stands up to the scrutiny of the courts, and with official backing there really is no reason to suppose otherwise, then it's an important step in the right direction. The licence overcomes the Great Omission of BSD -- that is, it explicitly states that if you distribute modified binaries you must also make the source available -- and even provides explicit permission to use the GPL as an alternative licence.
How long before there is a full-on, EU-wide Open Source push? What with rampant piracy in the former Eastern Bloc countries, official approval for the fair alternative can only benefit ordinary people.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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
What is there to question? There is no way a totalitarian state can force such a license to be included with the original source. And a totalitarian state probably won't care about the license, anyway. After all, who's going to enforce it?
You could question the morality of free software being used by totalitarian governments, but there's very little the FSF/OS community can do about that.
--
In Soviet Russia, a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods hates YOU!
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.
French laws are not the same as 'european' laws.
/me should find a job in the france ;)
For example, the intelectual ownership, the 'author' so to say.
In holland this is slightly different. If i am employed for a company, then this company is allowed to claim intellectual ownership about every line of code i write, also for open-source projects. This is because it is hard to distinguish 'personal' knowledge and 'professional' knowledge. In this case, the employer is protected a lot.
So, when employed as programmer, it is necessary to make a good arrangement, at least personal but preferably on paper, that you are allowed to write code in your own time and may publish this under a license chosen by you and that the company will grant you intellectual ownership of your code. However, it may be tough to get this black-on-white.. In practice it is no real problem, but juridical seen it is.
The french have arranged this better: intellectual ownerships is always at the author, as far as i understood.
maybe
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
Better than Never The Same Colour though, eh?
Q. Why are American pool tables blue?
A. So they look green on NTSC TV.
I noticed recently that there has been an effort to translate the Creative Commons licence into Nederlands...
see: http://creativecommons.org/ for more info.
Waag Society in Amsterdam were having some seminars about this issue (though their site is a bit broken at the moment www.waag.org).
I venture to say that free software undermines totalitarian states.
br> Let the governments make use of free software.
Let free software implant their heads with new ideas of collaboration outside of a central heirarchy.
The open source butterfly has flapped its wings. Let the reprecussions unfold... watching governments despertly stuggle yet fail to keep control.
The Custom Mary
The post was directed to questions of ethics.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
SECAM is the french TV standar, like NTSC for north america. In reality all european tv are PAL and SECAM compatible.
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.
France des not respect freedom?
France is a totalitarian state?
In relation to what? What are you trolling about?
In France, stupid people hate the USA for two reasons: fat people and rich people. Making fun of fat people (and McDonalds) is easy, and hating rich people is easy when you're poor. But there was a time (not so long ago) when americans were respected for their successful version of capitalism.
As for us, GPL nerds, we don't care about the USA because we're all some kind of techno hippies that love to share software, there's not even a religious barrier.
But don't be scared if a french guy is insulting an american, we've been doing this for years against canadians, belgians and swiss. Forget stupid people...
In fact, logically, if the GNU GPL was somehow incompatible or did not work fully with French law then the French government could not claim that their license was compatible with the GNU GPL under French law. That is, if the new license is really compatible with the GNU GPL then, by definition, the GNU GPL would work just as well as it in French law therefore there is no need for the new license.
I don't like the US goverment either (as a Ukonian) but the USan free software community and the FSF are the antithesis of the current US government, as they stand up for liberty and human rights--in a way they are the true USans (who follow the ideals of the constitution) as opposed to the USans who now give the US such a bad name.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Anyway, I imagine RMS will have to say a few thing on GPL-compatibility.
We saw him at Toulouse last Saturday, where he gave a speech about free software. Someone asked about CeCILL during the questions part of the speech, and he basically said it was fine (negating other FSF people's comments like these ones (in French).
blah
but in France if a contract is not in French, it's not worth anything.
The same can be applied to Belgium as well where a contract has to be in either the language of the part of the country. It is more complex then that.
This brings up the question if these are valid in other countries as well. It also is very normal. Imagine you having to sign or agree with a contract or licence in Japanese. Most likely you will not be able to know what you agree with.
Another question then comes to mind. If such a contract is not valid, what kind of licence is there then in, especialy, software. Does the Berne convention come into place (copyright) or is it free for all?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Anyway, I imagine RMS will have to say a few thing on GPL-compatibility.
We saw him at Toulouse last Saturday, where he gave a speech about free software. Someone asked about CeCILL during the questions part of the speech, and he basically said it was fine (negating other FSF people's comments like these ones (in French).
Transalation thanks to google
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Uh, no you dont. Thats not irony.
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.
My comment "there's very little the FSF/OS community can do about that" still holds. All the licenses in the world aren't going to stop $Regime from using it.
You could try adding code "IF domain=$Regime THEN Crash" but oh wait, the whole point of OSS is that the source is published...
So 'being ethical' about it won't accomplish anything.
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
Join Team Mozilla #38050 Folding@home
W Ketchup, America's Ketchup! The perfect complement to your Freedom Fries!
And why not finish your patriotic meal with some Star Spangled Ice Cream, for the complete Conservative American Experience?
What do you know about World Politic? Find out in this quiz
Let me couch this in terms more enticing to understand, let's look at the post in terms of beer...mmmmmm beer. Where I live there's a brewer that makes good beer. Sleemans is a brewery that's been around for more than a hundred years because it makes a good brew. The owner of the brewery, a Mr. John Sleeman speaks out in advertisements that promote his brand name while talking about drinking and driving. He says he knows he can't stop people from drinking and driving but that he feels a responsibilty to speak out against it as he is a brewer. I think Mr. Sleemans' efforts are laudatory. While he can't really do anything to stop people from drinking his brew then driving he can speak to the ethics of the situation and ask that people don't drink and drive.
My post simply spoke to the likelihood that FSF/OS organizations may have to speak to the ethics of the product being used is suppresive states. If and when this scenario comes into play the community will have to address the ethics of the situation. simple n'est pas?
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
It goes without saying, even in many of the other European countries I have visited recently, that the french have an arrogance about them that the USA can not even be compared to.
I don't say this to bash the french, or your comment (as it is a respectable opinion) however, in many instances throughout many aspects of the French economy, politics or culture, there is an "arrogance". It may be a cultural style of isolationism... but whatever you call it - it's prevelant in the medical industry (at times) and most notably technology, partly becaues of ignorance of technology and it's applications (like many other countries, even my own USA).
This is what I've noticed. My perspective is obviously going to be different. But I've traveled the globe for business and for pleasure. This "arrogance" (so quoted because it is the closest word I can't render at the moment), is noted and generally seen throughout neighboring countries and associated countries that are tied economically, socially or otherwise.
If I am wrong, I do apologise. This is only what one man, one slashdotter has noticed and observed throughout the world of business, medicine, economics and technology. But I hope this may either calm you in being offended. After all... they are only my observations.
Hope this may help.
And Finland has decided to quit all terrestrial analog transmissions in 2007 and move completely to digital television (DVB/MHP).
That's the first time I've been called that before (taking the term generically, of course). Pretty cool if you ask me.
Q: How does one make good business with a Frenchman ?
;-)
A : Buy him for what he's worth, and sell him for what he thinks he's worth...
See, you can also make fun of stupides français
Ceci n'est pas une signature
We don't hate the Americans. We don't hate America. In fact, I don't think I've ever met an American I couldn't get on with and I take my holidays in the US every year.
It just those idiots they (didn't?) elect to run their country we object to.
irony
\I"ron*y\, a. [From Iron.] 1. Made or consisting of iron; partaking of iron; iron; as, irony chains; irony particles. [R.]
Although I don't speak French, that licence seems a bit long to me. How many words does it take to say something like this:
in French?
Not been for the French all the time, being French myself, but I'm not against the American all the time, being in a community that has its root in the US. But then again, France is not the USA, and our law are different, which is why we needed a FOSS license on our own, because after all if the GPL can't have validity against the French law on certain points (as it was written against the US law) I think it is a very good thing to have a license that can stand in court in France. It is funny to see that SOME Americans think that whenever somebody else is doing something differently, it is obviously wrong and directed against the US as some kind of long lasting hate. Well not at all, but then ask you the question, when the US adopted something not American? well not really often, so as it seem normal for you to keep your American pride, please leave others keep their own pride if they think it is good for them. After all it is the excess of the US regime that we complain about, not the basic.
soft links.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
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
Doomed Very Badly - Terrible
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Someone from the UK (i.e.: a Brit or someone from Northern Ireland). It is kinda funny-sounding and possibly deprecatery.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
And no, it has nothing to do with either being feminist, male or a pig.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
'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.
"I, for one, welcome our nouvelle overlord of freedom."
Hey dumbass, you can't surrender to the French! (I'm kidding...really...I even married one!)
Just another day in Paradise
When open source software is developed and mainly targeted at a particular country (e.g.: France), it may not be a bad choice to add a licence that is based on the local copyright laws. That will make it a lot easier to enforce and/or defend it if it should come to a trial.
Theoretically, the Berne convention should cover international copyrights. In practice are lawsuits that cover international laws a lot more difficult , and a lot more expensive to pursuit.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
...will you americans call it the French License or the Freedom License ? :)
BoD
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!
From where we are looking who is the totalitarian state?
Who has stupid patents and stupid copyright that never expires (thanks you Walt Disney)?
realkiwi
Misses treating a couple of the columns as columns, but at least you can copy and paste line-by-line in those parts (en masse elsewhere).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Not true. My TV is only a couple of years old, and the only standards it supports are PAL and PAL60 (PAL with 60 fields / second, which means that I can watch US DVDs at the right frame rate, as long as the DVD player does the colour space conversion, and crops the frames). SECAM and PAL are both derived from the same mono signal standard, however, and so attempting to watch a SECAM signal on a PAL system (or vice versa) will give a mono image (since they were both designed not to break existing black and white TVs).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The French do not follow the same rules as the English for word capitalization. This is evident in the French article, if you RTFA: /.-capitalized title:
CeCILL : première licence francaise de logiciel libre élaborée par le CEA, le CNRS et l'INRIA
Now compare it with the
CeCILL: La Licence Francaise Du Logiciel Libre
Notice how not every single word (including the articles) is capitalized? (Also, why don't Slashdot support accents and foreign characters?)
Article 13 of the English translation says: "The Agreement is governed by French law. ... In the absence of an out-of-court settlement within two (2) months as from their occurrence, and unless emergency proceedings are necessary, the disagreements or disputes shall be referred to the Paris Courts having jurisdiction, by the first Party to take action."
This is very clearly a restriction the GPL does not make (it doesn't define any court having jurisdiction), and the GPL says that no additional restrictions may be added to a GPL'ed program. Defining which law governs the interpretation of the license is exactly why the license of Python 1.6b1 and later versions through 2.1 is not considered GPL-compatible by the FSF.
I haven't read the rest of the license in detail, but given that they didn't even get this one right, which has been a problem with one quite well-known project's license before, I don't have too high hopes...
Another dazzling display of completely misunderstanding irony. thanks! :-P
Judging from various news sources, the license was created as a protection for OSS developers.
French law doesn't seem to allow the "if something bad happens, you've been warned before" clause in the GPL, means a developer can't be hold liable for e.g. lost data. For that reason the "experienced user" term was added to this license, so a potential user has some kind of warning that the code might not perform as expected.
my 2 cents
You've answered your point in saying you have a British telly.
Manufacturers and/or resellers in Britain go out of their way to make sure a British telly does not work anywhere else other than Britain (and South Africa and Hong Kong...).
Must have something to do with taxes I guess, because I know for a fact that a TV bought anywhere else in Europe will 90% of the time work in all of Europe...
/. Where the truth
i, for one, welcome our nouvelle overlord of freedom
If that's not flamebait I don't know what is.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
A Brit is solely from Britan, an Irishmen comes from either Northern Ireland, or Southern Ireland, a Scot comes from Scotland, and a Welshman comes from Wales.
A Ukonian comes from the United Kingdom, and indicates only so much information. The UK much like the US is actually made up of smaller seperate "countries".
Sorry if I misspelt any of those nationalities, or countries, I'm working off little sleep, and I know them better in German, as the US doesn't harp on them too often. All I know for sure are Mexican, American, and Canadian... Everyone else is on the other side of the map to us.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Quite a few of the TVs sold in Britain seem to be SECAM-compatible, though. I think this is because it is cheaper to make one type of TV for both Britain and France. My TV supports PAL, SECAM and NTSC4.43 (no idea what that is), and this seems not to be unusual in modern TVs.
But why, oh why they couldn't use the same modulation in both terrestial and cable networks? (Yes, it is technically possible to broadcast DVB-T over cable -- it is frequenly done in the cable network of the campus area of HUT. ) Now, if you move to a new apartment and it has cable connection instead of roof antenna or vice versa, you'll need a new receiver; even the TVs with built-in DVB receivers still does not seem to have dual receivers, save then the set-top-boxes.
Practically we now have two different television standards in one county, which rather sucks!
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
I've written a couple of installation shells for GPL'd software, and I've put the GPL in the place of the EULA simply as a "in your face" to the installation script when it wants you to put something in there regarding licensing terms.
I actually find seeing the GPL as an EULA as refreshing, precisely due to what you said. You don't have to accept the license, and indeed you could put text on the buttons "Who cares" and "Doesn't matter". With people so used to draconian license terms from traditional Windows software, why not have the GPL as another licensing agreement to have to look through? Technically not exactly accurate, but who really reads the things anyway?
it would be nouvel, because when french doesn't sound nice, it is transformed. when the first letter of the following word is a vowel, then nouveau becomes nouvel, to let the sentence flows: "un nouveau avion" is wrong "un nouvel avion" is right (a new plane) while you'd say "un nouveau crayon" (a new pen)
Monty Python? Holy Grail? Hello? Anyone?
Quote: IANAL.
/.? If not, why don't we just post in every YRO story that "No one here is a lawyer." Think of how many "IANAL's" we'd save ourselves.
Quote: IANAL either.
Are there any lawyers on
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
Speaking as an American who moved here to France five years ago, I think most perceptions of arrogance on both sides are due more to cultural differences than efforts or non-efforts to speak the language.
The French are more polite than Americans in certain situations and less so in others. For example, have you ever stood in line in France? It's every one for his or her self. Americans would find this very rude, but in France it's normal. On the other hand, in France you say hello and good-bye at least once to everyone you do business with, including the person at the toll booth as you plunk change into her palm while hardly even stopping the car. An American probably wouldn't think twice about never saying a word in such a situation, but a French person would probably find it rude.
There are many other examples of courtesies that are simply different between the two cultures. If an American isn't aware of the differences, he or she may find French people rude and perhaps arrogant, and vice versa.
In many parts of Europe, there simply isn't a
way to place something into the public domain.
As the author, you will always retain some rights.
Well, I guess you could kill yourself and all
of your heirs. That might work.
Unfortunately, the grammarian shock troops would probably just toss you in a re-education camp as soon as they arrived.
You probably meant nouveau suzerain (or nouveaux suzerains to maintain parity with the Simpsons.)
Of course, by posting this in the clear and not as an AC, I'm now exposing myself to our new overlords as someone who may also need a few years of work^h^h^h^hre-education, otherwise know as "French II".
-- clvrmnky
Hardware is masculine, obviously.
Just combine a CeCILL program with something GPL'ed (e.g. a one-line patch you write yourself), then the licence permits you to publish the result under the GPL. If the combined product is under the GPL, then so is every part of it, in particular the original CeCILL program itself.
From this I conclude that CeCILL programs can always be redistributed under the GPL.
CeCILL: First French Free Software License
Produced by the CEA, the CNRS, and the INRIA
Paris, 5 July 2004
The CEA, the CNRS, and the INRIA have just produced the first license that defines the principles of use and distribution of Free software in accordance with French law. This license called CeCILL (Ce: CEA (Atomic Energy Comission), C: CNRS (National Center of Scientific Research), I: INRIA (National Institute of Computing and Automation Research), LL: Free Software) is meant to be adopted by French research organizations and more generally by any entity or individual that wishes to distribute its work under a Free software license, with complete legal assurance. This project, welcomed by the Agency for the Development of Electronic Administration (ADAE), enters into the debate on collaborative development of Free software components prescribed by the ADELE (Electronic Administration 2004-2007) government program.
Distributing Free software does not mean giving up all rights to the product: the author and the user each have rights, requirements, and responsibilities that are defined by the license attached to the software. Currently, the majority of French Free software is distributed under Anglo-Saxon licenses, notably the General Public License (GPL), as Free software was first developed in the United States. The project of the CEA, the CNRS, and the INRIA was to produce a license adapted to French law and compatible with the GPL, from which its principles are derived. Its two guiding criteria were:
This license is the first of a family based on the same principles as those of other frequently used licenses.
For the CEA, the CNRS, and the INRIA, which play a major role in French and European research, the development of Free software is essential. This license, which conforms to French law, is both a tool for the initial publication and distribution of research in a competitive global context and a tool of transfer to organizations and end users, who are becoming more and more interested in this economic model.
I predict it will flip on December 24, 2011.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
Those French! It's like they have a different word for EVERYTHING!
Proverbs 21:19
Yeah, but he's mixing the languages too much. "Overlord" should be seigneur, or something like that.
Proverbs 21:19
If you really want to be pedantic why not settle for "citizen of the United Kingdom" or just "UK citizen" it is longer I know but much easier on the ears. "UKonian" on Google only returns 4 results, and "UKonian" on google.co.uk only returns 1! Really these terms: "USian" and now "UKonian" are just plain silly.
"Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule." -- Nietzsche
FREE SOFTWARE LICENSING AGREEMENT CeCILL
.open source. distribution model.
.as is. at the time when the Licensee accepts the Agreement.
.as is. at the time when it is distributed for the first time under the terms and conditions of the Agreement.
Notice
---
This Agreement is a free software license that is the result of discussions between its authors in order to ensure compliance with the two main principles guiding its drafting:
- firstly, its conformity with French law, both as regards the law of torts and intellectual property law, and the protection that it offers to authors and the holders of economic rights over software.
- secondly, compliance with the principles for the distribution of free software: access to source codes, extended user-rights.
The following bodies are the authors of the license CeCILL[1]:
Commissariat à l.Energie Atomique - CEA, a public scientific, technical and industrial establishment, having its principal place of business at 31-33 rue de la Fédération, 75752 PARIS cede- 15.
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - CNRS, a public scientific and technological establishment, having its principal place of business at 3 rue Michel-Ange 75794 Paris cede- 16.
Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique- INRIA,
apublic scientific and technological establishment, having its principal place of business at Domaine de Voluceau, Rocquencourt, BP 105, 78153 Le Chesnay cedex.
PREAMBLE
The purpose of this Free Software Licensing Agreement is to grant users the right to modify and redistribute the software governed by this license within the framework of an
The exercising of these rights is conditional upon certain obligations for users so as to ensure that this status is retained for subsequent redistribution operations.
Nevertheless, access to the source code, and the resulting rights to copy, modify and redistribute only provide users with a limited warranty and the Software's author, the holder of the economic rights, and the successive licensors only have limited liability.
In this respect, the user's attention is drawn to the risks associated with loading, using, modifying and/or developing or reproducing the software by the user in light of its specific status of free software, that may mean that it is complicated to manipulate, and that also therefore means that it is reserved for developers and experienced professionals having in-depth IT knowledge. Users are therefore encouraged to load and test the Software.s suitability as regards their requirements in conditions enabling the security of their systems and/or data to be ensured and, more generally, to use and operate it in the same conditions as regards security. This Agreement may be freely reproduced and published, provided it is not altered, and that no Articles are either added or removed herefrom.
This Agreement may apply to any or all software for which the holder of the economic rights decides to submit the operation thereof to its provisions.
Article 1 . DEFINITIONS
For the purposes of this Agreement, when the following expressions commence with a capital letter, they shall have the following meaning:
Agreement: means this Licensing Agreement, and any or all of its subsequent versions.
Software: means the software in its Object Code and/or Source Code form and, where applicable, its documentation,
Initial Software: means the Software in its Source Code and/or Object Code form and, where applicable, its documentation,
Modified Software: means the Software modified by at least one Contribution.
Source Code: means all the Software's instructions and program lines to which access is required so as to modify the Software.
Object Code: means the binary files originating from the compilation of the Source Code.
Holder: means the holder of the economic copyright
Remember that while the internet and computers cross international bounderies easily, this doesn't erase them. Local laws are in full effect, and often fraught with Byzantine clauses and stipulations. Making, essentially, a French version of the GPL, which expressly allows conversion TO the GPL, but which is fully compliant with local legislative requirements is excellent. It shows that FOSS is being taken seriously by those with the money and interest to insure their rights are protected.
Oh, regarding the French. I've traveled fairly broadly (though not to France as yet). Some cultures differ markedly from the US, and to the extent they differ misunderstandings can easily arise. Thus the phrase "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." It seems that SOME people assume their native culture is inherently superior, and set out to "enlighten the foreign savages" when they travel. Hint: not a winning strategy. Check you ego at the door, and try to learn the native culture -- you'll be surprised and what you can learn and how eager most people are to share the richness of their culture with an eager student.
This mess of course makes the GPL's freedom with copying that is not distribution especially nice.
It's le nouveau overlord. Lord is masculine. But what am I complaining about, this is Slashdot, stories often have grammar, spelling and content mistakes even when they are in English.
This new license is good because it's based on French laws rather than a French interpretation of US laws,
IANAFL, but I wonder exactly what were the differences in French law that really and essentially had to be taken into account? (It seems GPL has made the migration into Germany ok -- think netfilter -- so why not France too?)
There is one particular oddity about CeCiLL apart from the fact it is cast as a contract (of adhesion) rather than a licence. The contract may be formed not only by first exercise of any of the rights that it offers to grant (ok, no news there), but also -- and can they really mean this? -- merely by downloading the software (section 3.1(i))!
This seems to assume that French law really does subject you to whatever somebody chooses to put into a EULA just on the grounds that you downloaded it! Can that be right? If it's true, then I'm certainly going to keep my hands off computer keyboards next time I visit France!
Any views from French lawyers on the question whether EULAs (or any other terms dictated in a sw package) automatically apply in France just by the fact you downloaded them?
Possibly CeCiLL may need some additional careful legal consideration before it is finalised!
-wb-
Isn't France the country where you can't develop software containing English in the source code?!
No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
Which part of the comment exactly?
Notice, that I'm not saying that I personnaly hate Americans or view them as arrogant, I'm just trying to explain why some French don't like Americans, how that makes me ignorant?
From French viewpoint the invasion of Irak was deemed as arrogant or stupid: when you distroy a dictator, the problem is not killing the dictator, the problem is what happens next: the situation could easily become a civil war with even Turquie's intervention if the Kurdes start an independ country inside Irak..
The US army apparently didn't even anticipate the pillaging, after the war or didn't care to prevent it, somehow this doesn't make people here very optimistic for the future of Irak, let's hope that we're wrong..
And if memory serves a majority of Americans were in favor of this war, so this is not only the problem of the president..
If it includes GPL code, it may be distributed under the GPL (hence, the GPL will after this point be the ONLY licence governing the work). Since I also have the right to modify the code, I can add a dummy
/* This comment is covered by the GNU GPL - Kjella, 13.07.04 */
and GPL the whole software (according to their definition of "Modified software"). At which point all of GPLs restrictions apply, and NONE of the previous licence. It is like a one-way sinkhole to the GPL licence.
Also, it would appear to me that the wording implies it is only compatible with the GPL, not with GPL-compatible licences. So if you wish to create a CeCILL/GPL/GPL-compatible (wide range to pick from here) work, you have no choice but to GPL the CeCILL code.
At this point the CeCILL restrictions no longer apply, and you can distribute it as a GPL/GPL-compatible product. This would ensure that any software initially released under this software would be instantly GPL'd, and this is a one-way occurance.
I don't see it has any legal value, because if the GPL is flawed, it is still your IP that is licenced under the GPL after such a licence change, so you're still liable. And if the GPL is void where you are, then well - the code will as I said be irreversably GPL'd soon anyway, so you've achieved nothing.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
1. I have a useful project I'd like to contribute to.
2. Because I find the project useful, I would like to see that product thrive.
3. In order to make it thrive, the GPL is superior.
Say what you want, but I've never seen a BSD program develop faster than it would if it were GPL licenced. It's not really about who profits from what and all that, it is to further the goal I already sought by contributing.
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,
Wow, is that turning things around. It is exactly because I considered the existence of good open source software to be beneficial to myself, that I contribute with the licence best suited to promote that. The GPL doesn't in any way limit anyone whose goal is "the existence of good open source software".
If you in any way are "forced" by the GPL, then that is not your goal. If it was, you would have no opposition to releasing your code. And if your goal is "to create a proprietary application based on OSS" or something like that, I couldn't care less what you think of the licence.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Contract Essentially Contrary to Imbecilic Legal Lameness
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.
-US library, GPL
-French person modifies library and uses CeCILL (which is compatible with GPL only within France)
-UK person uses library under the provision of CeCILL that GPL can supersedes it effectively meaning it is still under GPL
Given that CeCILL is "compatible" with GPL, they are interchangeable. The fact is that GPL is not enforceable under French law due to differences with regard to liability.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I understand what you are saying here, but I don't think you understand how an American judge would view this. If you want to understand that software covered under this license is going to be released in France, I understand.
.fr, I discover that it is released using the CeCILL license.
/., I certainly hope that copyright for this original set of words is still valid in France. I certainly would enforce violations of the GPL to my software in France. Why not expect the same to happen to me here in America for some French software?
I just see that software doesn't know boundaries, and software using this license will somehow or another make it to the U.S.A. When it does, American copyright law will take over, as modified by copyright treaties (notably Bern) and agreements between the French and U.S. governments. Ultimately also the U.S. constitution, but let's leave that out of the equation for the moment.
I have a piece of software that was written in France. For example, quite a bit of multimedia software is developed in France that is of quite high quality, some of it even released as an open source software product.
When this software comes into my hands somehow, I look at it, run the software, it does just what I want to do to accomplish some computing/software task, so I want to add it to my own piece of software, possibly even another open source project. That is the whole point of open source/free software anyway.
As I read through the documentation that I downloaded from a website ending in
At this point I'll have to yell "DAMN!" and throw it away, because it has the same value as if it had some from some secret Microsoft developer's FTP site for some project kept under wraps by that software company. Or worse yet some code actually written by SCO. (All 10 lines of it.:)
This is because the license does indeed apply to me, and I need to know under what terms I can copy the software and use it. It makes no difference if I am a citizen or resident of France, U.S.A., Canada, Mexico, Ghana, Japan, China, or Pitcrin Island. The license still applies to me. If the license terms spell out that in a juristiction out side of France it reverts to standard Gnu Public License Verion 2 or later, then it should spell out those terms explicitly or I am bound by both French and American law to honor the terms as specified. The CeCILL license as I read it does no such thing. It doesn't even spell out what GPL means, much less say when the GPL goes into effect.
I am saying that there are some legal holes that if you wanted to enforce copyright in the U.S.A. with this software license (I.E. not let Microsoft incorporate it into the next version of Windows Longhorn, without attribution or without even letting you know about some potential flaws in the software you didn't know about, and without source code for anybody that gets the new version of M$ software), it simply won't work. That is fine if you want to simply say that outside of France this software is in the public domain. I don't think that is the goal of this software license, however, or is it?
The other possible outcome is that there is no license to use any software written under the CeCILL license outside of France. If the software is written using this software license, it is illegal for you to even possess it outside of France. That is one thing copyright can do, and is a monopoly that is absolute in the eyes of the law. Certainly no software could be copied outside of France under these terms. This makes it in some ways even worse than propritary software.
Which outcome do you think it should be? You mean to tell me that when you write anything in France (or where ever you live...I know you said you don't live in France), you don't want copyright protection in the USA? For every software project, or even prose like this comment on
As I said earlier, this license is full of holes, and it needs to be understood and read for how it
Frenchy, language nazi
We had similar debates over the past year or so in Brazil, about creating a license in the spirit of the GNU GPL, but adapted to Brazilian law. Heck, there is even a license that was proposed to that end.
Anyhow... Creating new licenses to duplicate the spirit of the GPL is pointless. Either they're compatible with the GPL and can irreversibly decay to it, defeating the point of the license adapted to local legislation, or it's incompatible and you're stuck out of the worldwide Free Software community, having to reinvent it all from scratch.
If you must, work on a (semi-?)official translation, and/or work to get the legislation to support the concept of Free Software licenses that are valid worldwide.
Translations of the GPL will likely fit well into any legal system, since the GPL doesn't take any rights away. Changing legislation can be trickier, but as governments look into adopting Free Software, the need for making sure the software they use, developed by a worldwide community, has a clear legal status, can be used to help promote the legal changes.
In Brazil, we ended up with a legal translation of the GNU GPL, registered in Creative Commons, and, in spite of all the initial noise about fundamental incompatibilities of the GNU GPL with the local law, they all turned out to be misunderstandings of the original license. I'd strongly advise France and any other countries to follow this path, if at all possible.
First, U.S. copyright law was amended to deal with software, including copying in order to run the program, in the Software Copyright Act of 1980. Not 1987.
Second, that law clearly states "it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided . . . that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner[.]"
Which means, at least in my non-lawyer analysis, it allows you to freely install a program to hard disk in order to use it, in addition to RAM.
I fully agree, both terms are plain silly.
And you're right, pedantically they should be "UK Citizen" and "US Citizen" (which by the way, the US government uses all the time in place of "American").
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Huh - I had always thought that the "essential step" exemption didn't come into place until after mass market distribution of software with EULAs which hung their legality on the legally tenuous-but-arguable "you're making a copy in RAM in order to use it" theory.
But apparently copyright law (in the US) has never provided legal support to mass-market EULAs. Huh.
(Hence the push for states to enact UTICA, though why something like that wasn't pushed in the mid-1980s is beyond me)
And as far as I can tell, you're right in your reading (though I am also not a lawyer), and it would cover programs which need to be installed to hard disk before being used.
Which part of CeCILL allows a program written originally and released with only the CeCILL license (no GPL component reuse at all) to be included within a GPL program?
That appears to be absent.