GPL Wins In French Court Case

viralMeme writes "An appeals court in Paris has upheld the ruling from a lower court, which found that the French firm Edu4 had violated the GNU General Public License (GPL). The plaintiff was the French Organisation Association francaise pour la Formation Professionnelle des Adultes (AFPA), an umbrella organization for adult education." The basic charge was the removal of copyrights and such from VNC source code, and not distributing it.

Comments

Re:Why?

[Noryungi]

Read the article: AFPA - the education agency - sued edu4 - a company working for this agency - because edu4 did not release the source code to its modified VNC software.

The court essentially said that AFPA was correct, that the GPL should have been upheld by edu4, and that the source code should be released by edu4 to its client, the AFPA.

Essentially, this is good news: as far as France is concerned, the GPL has been challenged, and upheld in court. Modifications done by a private company to a GPL software should therefore be available for all.

Re:What the hell? Crazy French!

[Narishma]

Read the article. The AFPA requested the source code of the modifications the company (Edu4) did to VNC but the company refused to provide it and so they were sued.

Re:Why?

[morgan_greywolf]

You're both almost right.

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

        a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
        b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
(rest of section 3 omitted since it's irrelevant here)

Empahsis mine.

Basically, edu4 could have either distribute the source with the binaries or accompany the binaries with a written offer to distribute the source to any third parties. (I suppose they technically could have done both and still be in compliance, but that seems rather redundant)

Re:What the hell? Crazy French!

[Aim Here]

It's an idiosyncracy of French law. The plaintiff here was a customer who did, yes, successfully sue for the source code. It probably couldn't happen in the US or UK.

FSF France's take on this finds this noteworthy:

"But what makes this ruling unique is the fact that the suit was filed by a user of the software, instead of a copyright holder. It's a commonly held belief that only the copyright holder of a work can enforce the license's terms - but that's not true in France. People who received software under the GNU GPL can also request compliance, since the license grants them rights from the authors."

Just when you thought the German courts were GPL-friendly, this shows up. Vive la France!

Re:What the hell? Crazy French!

[russotto]

Hang on just a second. Does the AFPA (the plaintiffs) own the copyright on the GPLd source? They do not. Then what standing do they have to sue anyone over it, or receive payment? This is GPL related, but the relief went to a 3rd party!

Well, first of all, this was French law, not US or English, so their idea of standing might be different.

Second, the AFPA were third party beneficiaries of the GPL -- as receivers of the binary, they were entitled (by the GPL) to receive the source. This might have granted them standing even in the US.

From
http://ejustice.org/federal_practice_manual_2006/chapter_5/chap5sec3.html

Section 302 defines all beneficiaries of a contract as being intended or incidental. Only an intended beneficiary has standing to enforce a contract between two other parties. Whether a person is an intended beneficiary with the resulting right to sue depends upon the intention of the parties to the contract. That intent may be articulated in the contract itself, or discerned or imputed from the statutory context that prompted the contract to be executed.

The GPL (IMO, IANAL) makes it crystal clear that the person receiving the binary is an intended beneficiary.