Slashdot Mirror
France Hostile To Open Source Software?
AdamWeeden writes "According to the Free Software Foundation of France the French Department of Culture is telling free (as in speech) software providers that 'You will be required to change your licenses ... You shall stop publishing free software,' and warn they are ready 'to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code.'" From the post: "It appears that publishing Free Software giving access to culture is about to become a counterfeiting criminal offence. Will SACEM sue France Télécom R&D research labs for having published Maay and Solipsis (P2P pieces of software used to exchange data)? Up to this point, the rather technical debate surrounding the issues addressed by DADVSI bill (copyright and neighbouring rights in the information society) makes one ask: Just how much control do the Big Players in the field of culture want to seize? It now looks like years of quibbling have put an end to compromises." More information on the DADVSI bill is available at Infos-du-net.com. They've come a long way since last year.
This, were it to pass, would effectively shut out France and French OSS developers while not changing a damn thing anywhere else. OSS will still be available to anyone in France who wishes to download it, but France will have been cut out of a large and quickly growing segment of the tech industry. The most popular server OS, most popular web server, Internet DNS, and most popular MTA, among other software, will no longer be legal in France. How will they even route their Internet traffic?
Have they thought about this at all?
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
"Magouilles"
With an "o", sorry.
You can't take the sky from me...
Russia
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
But why is open source code even mentioned? I don't understand the connection. And the original article is vague and shitty.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
But....it is the government. Right now SNEP and SCPP don't have any legal legs to stand on. But, if the DADVSI bill gets passed, then the SNEP and SCPP will be able to sue. So, yes, the government is considering passing a bill which would allow these organizations to sue the free software authors.
Ça c'est fucké...
That is the most fubar'd proposed bit of IP legislation I have ever heard...
If you want to give free access to your own IP, why the devil should it be against the law?
This is bizarre... I cannot think of an industry outside music and movies that would even think of lobbying for such legislation in any nation... Hell, Wall Street uses a lot of OSS, and I imagine that the Euro-zone financial giants do as well.
This is quite possibly the most myopic bit of IP legislation I have ever seen.
Sadly, regular slashdot readers get the impression that the US is the heart of all that is evil and the UN/EU is a bastion of justice and peace.
I read
I didn't think it was possible, but seeing all these replies makes me kind of ashamed of being part of the Slashdot community. I mean, occasional trolls are one thing, but more than hundred posts of fresh new jokes and insightful rants about France, that's just really embarassing. Signal to noise was never this bad. And the only on-topic comments by people who bothered to read the article came down to this being sort of a non-issue.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
It's interesting to see that while people rag on America
When America is in the wrong, it's the patriotic duty of all Americans to criticize America that she might right herself.
all the time for being a bunch of corporate shills
I assume you are referring to Congress. If so, are you saying they aren't a bunch of corporate shills?
Meanwhile, our french friends are hostile to it.
In this one instance. Albeit, this appears to be quite a doozy of an instance. There's a difference between consistently and systematically consolidating power in the hands of the corporate powers and the wealthy few, than one instance of the same.
But let's look at what you are saying more closely. You appear to be repeating the standard, "shut up all you 'blame-America-first' people, France does bad things too, why don't you blame them for once?" What you are missing is that we are being very consistent. We are blaming America when America deserves blame, but we are also blaming France when France deserves blame. Is there something wrong with this?
And they say OSS is a liberal thing.
And they're right. OSS is a very liberal thing. Not capital-L liberal, just liberal. Specifically, it's generous, empowers the individual, and it has a general goal to better the world in some way.
I wouldnt worry. I dont think a single article will be enough to sway anyone's opinion on the populace of an entire country. Every country has wealthy fools who make decisions they shouldnt be making. In this regard, America is quite renowned.
So, yes, the government is considering passing a bill which would allow these organizations to sue the free software authors.
Agreed, but saying "the goverment is examining a bill proposed by the french MPAA" is very different from saying "French Department of Culture is telling free (as in speech) software providers that 'You will be required to change your license".
Especially when you quote an article that says "SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors:", you can't quote an FSF article and replace "MPAA" by "the Goverment" in an article posted on Slashdot's main page, its fucking crazy!
That's the image of the media these days, but I expected something better from slashdot.
The status, right now, and I know because I live in French, is that this will be considered, and when the Powers That Be will realize how stupid this claim is, it will be dismissed. k?
Just so you know, France's government isn't liberal. Google "Jean-Marie Le Pen" for the historical details, but they basically had to choose between doppelgangern of Gee-Dub or Pat Buchannon, and chose Bush's counterpart.
Just so you know, Chirac is to the left of most Democrats in the USA. Hence the "liberal" moniker.
From what little I understood...
.WMV file, if it doesn't, it would be illegal to use it.
Imagine you use Firefox to download a DRM'ed Windows Media Video file.
Firefox would have to respect the copy prohibition embedded in that
Now imagine Firefox DOES respect the copy prohibition. Since Firefox is Free Software, it can be modified so it WON'T respect the prohibition.
As such, it would be illegal to use it.
These two situations are an example of what that law would turn illegal.
If you dig to a lower level, maybe the network card driver should analise the content, I think.
This is actually quite funny, coming from a nation that, more than 200 years ago, revolted against the "elite" and demanded liberty and equality.
Didn't they get it then?
Plenty of US politicians are racist and get away with it. The terminology is different, but it's hard to find a politician who treats Arabs, Persians, and followers of Mohammed as equals to Caucasians and followers of Christ. A quick check of Guantamano Bay and our behaviour in Iraq will attest to that and it would be political suicide for politicians to attack those policies, particularly with regard to Palestine.
We might not pay mon-and-pop farmers $40 a day to keep cows, but we match France's agricultural subsidies with our Agricultural Adjustment Act and massive ethanol subsidies. At least the French spread the wealth around, generally subsidizing small farmers whereas we target giant agribusiness with our largesse.
The American definition of "Liberal" and "Conservative" are horribly contrived, inconsistent things.
For example: If Anne Coulter is as conservative as she says she is, why is she writing political columns and not making me a sammich?
It's been a long time.
I am amazed any government can come out with something like this. I have a feeling this is just to deflect attention from more subtle barriers to entry being created. The idea is the FSF, Mandriva, Redhat and any other business and organisation that feels threatend spends all their energy fighting this particular threat.
It can't possibly become law. It's the "bad bill". The "good bill" is in there somewhere.
For software companies to push to ban open source is a bit like publishing companies pushing government to ban blogs and school essays because they threaten their ability to sell books.
Another aspect is that this also threatens the business interests of the companies that use open source in their business such as IBM and Novell. I'm sure they won't take this nonsense from the French government. Have they sent a letter to IBM in France threatening to sue them yet?
Anyway, no matter who you are, it is pretty hard to be up for ever. Eventually you are going to lose some battle and come back down to earth. It happened from Babylon, through Egypt, Greece, Rome, on up through the ages. There aren't too many who just decided to quit while on a winning streak. Even the Mongols eventually gave everything back up (why would you move back to Mongolia willingly :-)... and they pretty much had the most successful military leader ever: Ghengis Khan, who captured most of Eurasia (that's like 13 extra pieces per turn isn't it?). I guess in the end, history shows that those at the top will eventually lose and slide down... maybe not all in big spectacular losses, but sure enough none the less. So the fact that France lost a lot of wars... just means they've been around a lot longer than some countries. But it is still fun to poke fun at others' misfortunes isn't it. Why else would we laugh at a film of someone stepping on a rake? As a bit of comparison, I notice Britain is not currently run by the Picts, or Druid preists, or the later arriving Celts (originally from central and east Europe), or the Romans, or the Angles, or the Saxons, or the Normans... well... maybe them... but they were from France... ;-) Every society will eventually be humbled.
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