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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."
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
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.
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.
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'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?
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
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
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)
...will you americans call it the French License or the Freedom License ? :)
BoD
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.
Hear me out a bit. If I write some code (Not that I am able to) and I put it on a Belgian Server, standing in Belgium living in Belgium and slap the GPL on it, the GPL (if in English) would not be valid. People could download it and implement it in their own projects. Suddenly I realize that the GPL does not apply, so I start asking money or start suing people, because they infinged the copyright. I never gave them permision to use the code, as the GPL did not apply.
It is doen with a LOT of software that originates outside the USofA. A lot of them just have the GPL or point to the English GPL.
This could mean that all code that was written outside of the USofA and implemented in OSS projects, like Linux, is not under the GPL but under copyright. That could mean that somebody who is a kernel developer sells his copyright to, say, SCO.
IF this is possible, then there is all need to get nervous and paranoid.
So what is happening in France is extremely usefull and perhaps should be followed by other countries all over the world. At least people who are lawers should have a closer look at it, before SCO and the like take a look at it.
I surely hope that my reasoning is completely false. I have no idea what would happen if I suddenly would claim my copyright after I put a GPL on it. If I am an individual, I probably get laughed at. If I am a large company, I might get what I want. The proof that copyrighted code is put into OSS illegaly (or at least a lot of FUD).
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
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
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.