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France Hostile To Open Source Software?

Posted by Zonk on from the no-frog-jokes dept.

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.

4 of 524 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by bl4nk · · Score: 0, Redundant

    What if they charge a minimal, insignificant fee of the smallest monetary unit?

  2. Oh this is nothing.. by Anonymous+Meoward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    All the FSF has to do is to declare war on France, and sign the armistice 30 minutes later..

    --
    --- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
  3. So charge a penny for it by lildogie · · Score: 0, Redundant

    maybe they can work around this by changing from "free" to "very low cost."

  4. Re:France threats by umrgregg · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Well, the thing for the open source community to do would be to declare war on France.

    Once war is declared, France will quickly embrace OSS.

    --
    NMG