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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.

2 of 524 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Is there a French word for "Backroom Deal"? by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Maguilles de coulisses"

    Litterally, I think, "backstage swindle".

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...

  2. Online Petition by vagabond_gr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is an online petition against the bill here. It started today and there are already 2087 signatures by individuals and 40 by organisations. Go on and sign.