Slashdot Mirror
Launch of First International FOSS Law Review
Graeme West writes "A group of tech lawyers has announced the release of the inaugural issue of the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSS L. Rev.) — a place for high-level discussion of issues and best practice in the implementation of FOSS. You can view the announcement, or skip straight to Volume 1, Issue 1. A downloadable PDF file is also available. The journal is open access, and articles are CC licensed."
This is gunna take me days to read.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I hope the EU issues a GPL3-compatible version of the EUPL, so devs in Europe are on the legally safe side.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I don't remember clicking on the EULA for this crap. Why do I have to be bound by what "a group of lawyers" thinks "best practices" are? Oh wait, I don't...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The paper seem to focus on case law. That only involves some former British colonies. Most countries create their laws and regulations through their political system, not their judicial system. Separation between legislative and executive powers are a really good thing from a democracy viewpoint. It means people are less likely to get abused by the legal system and that the process of creating, and decisions and motivations behind, a law or regulations become easy to follow, criticise and rectify for common people. It also make the legal system less complicated, cheaper and more robust. Common Law systems have a really bad track record compared to Civil Law systems.
Yeah, I know that even something that only involves two countries could be called "international", just like you could create a "internet" containing only two networks. But in this case the word international implies something more then just Common Law.
In the good old times, everyone on slashdot read tfa.
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
... the EUPL has indeed been carefully designed so as to be legal in any european country--or more precisely, as legal as it goes.
You mean in any EU country, not every European country. Some of us don't want your EU or its laws.
As someone living in France, where law is created by representatives and not judges, I would like to respectfully disagreee on the 'people being less likely to get abused by the legal system' when law come fro the legislative power.
Speaking as a European lawyer I find it interesting that it's only in France that I've seen this kind of legislation survive (in any form), and there are plenty of other European countries where legislation is created by representatives.
Note that I said "survive", because it has been suggested in other countries as well. I don't remember it surviving in any other countries, however please correct me if I am wrong.
As far as I can see your statement is too broad and wide ranging with France as the only example. I still believe legislation created by representatives is better than courts doing so.
Commonwealth + US != "two countries", moran
Actually the math should read:
US + UK + Commonwealth < "Civil Law" system(s)
Civil Law is the system used in most European, Asian, African, Latin-American countries.
The US, UK, parts of Canada and Australia use Common Law, and they are indeed important, however the majority of the worlds countries do not use Common Law.
I don't think I've made a broad statement; rather, I gave a specific counter-example to the broad statement that 'a separate legislative power makes people less likely to be abused by the legal system' by showing that France, at least, was a case with a separate legislative power *and* abusive laws passed by this power.
While I understand your argument I don't see that your one example of it happening in France disproves the wider theory. I see France as the exception to the rule.
It was this statement I found too broad, it did not prove that it was common in states such as ours. However it's not my specialty so I will leave it at that :)