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GPL Wins In French Court Case

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the here-come-the-jokes dept.

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.

2 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Informative

    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)

    --
    My blog
  2. Re:What the hell? Crazy French! by Aim+Here · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!