CeCILL: La Licence Francaise Du Logiciel Libre 362
News for nerds writes "Researchers at three French government-funded research organizations revealed the new Open-Source license, known as CeCILL (English .pdf here), which they say is compatible with the FSF's GPL. CeCILL is intended to make free software more compatible with French law in two areas where it differs significantly from U.S. law: copyright and product liability. I, for one, welcome our nouvelle overlord of freedom."
About time (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, not being a lawyer and all, my question is: can a french developer use the CeCILL license as a drop-in replacement for the GPL? can he ship both licenses in a software product's tarball and consider both licenses equivalent in terms of rights they grant, in each country?
Re:About time (Score:3, Interesting)
The day the GPL will be translated and adapted for all the countries, will we have to add a 50Mb text containing all this licenses in each software product's tarball ??? I think soureforge will explode!
Re:About time (Score:3, Interesting)
A Good Thing (Score:3, Interesting)
How long before there is a full-on, EU-wide Open Source push? What with rampant piracy in the former Eastern Bloc countries, official approval for the fair alternative can only benefit ordinary people.
Re:I suspect... (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, logically, if the GNU GPL was somehow incompatible or did not work fully with French law then the French government could not claim that their license was compatible with the GNU GPL under French law. That is, if the new license is really compatible with the GNU GPL then, by definition, the GNU GPL would work just as well as it in French law therefore there is no need for the new license.
I don't like the US goverment either (as a Ukonian) but the USan free software community and the FSF are the antithesis of the current US government, as they stand up for liberty and human rights--in a way they are the true USans (who follow the ideals of the constitution) as opposed to the USans who now give the US such a bad name.
Re:When ideologies clash (Score:3, Interesting)
My post simply spoke to the likelihood that FSF/OS organizations may have to speak to the ethics of the product being used is suppresive states. If and when this scenario comes into play the community will have to address the ethics of the situation. simple n'est pas?
Re:About time (Score:3, Interesting)
IANAL either.
Note to Monolinguists (Score:3, Interesting)
CeCILL : première licence francaise de logiciel libre élaborée par le CEA, le CNRS et l'INRIA
Now compare it with the
CeCILL: La Licence Francaise Du Logiciel Libre
Notice how not every single word (including the articles) is capitalized? (Also, why don't Slashdot support accents and foreign characters?)
Not compatible with GPL (Score:2, Interesting)
Article 13 of the English translation says: "The Agreement is governed by French law. ... In the absence of an out-of-court settlement within two (2) months as from their occurrence, and unless emergency proceedings are necessary, the disagreements or disputes shall be referred to the Paris Courts having jurisdiction, by the first Party to take action."
This is very clearly a restriction the GPL does not make (it doesn't define any court having jurisdiction), and the GPL says that no additional restrictions may be added to a GPL'ed program. Defining which law governs the interpretation of the license is exactly why the license of Python 1.6b1 and later versions through 2.1 is not considered GPL-compatible [gnu.org] by the FSF.
I haven't read the rest of the license in detail, but given that they didn't even get this one right, which has been a problem with one quite well-known project's license before, I don't have too high hopes...
Re:What about Article 13.2? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a huge hole, and I'm not even sure it would hold up in U.S. courts... as in if an American modified software using this this license, would the license even be recognized at all by U.S. Courts? As in would this license even be held to be recognized in a U.S. Court, or would this provision throw the whole license out and invalidate the entire license?
Yes, I also read section 11.4, but in this case that may not be sufficient language to justify "invalidating" the juristiction question. I don't see U.S. courts enforcing civil action against U.S. citizens that was done in a French court, particularly when the alleged infringement took place on American soil. In other words, knock your socks off and sue for millions of dollars against an American, but you couldn't collect a dime even if you won in court. It would just have the effect of placing a legal ban on that person from ever coming to France (which most Americans wouldn't care about anyway).
How I could see U.S. common law interpreting this, assuming that it declares this license to be invalid, is to consider more along the lines of intent rather than actual prohibition. An "enlightened" judge might presume the terms of the GPL as an alternate, but more likely consider that the software was place into "Public Domain", and follow existing U.S. common law regarding its copyright status at that point. At least the GPL has a provision that if the license is unenforceable, then the license is revoked at it reverts to standard copyright terms, which would otherwise mean it simply can't be redistributed. I don't see this provision at all.
I'm not too comfortable with Section 5.3.4 either. It mentions almost in passing that this license can be superceeded by the GPL under some circumstances. The Gnu Public License is not otherwise defined (Is that the General-microsoft Propritary License instead?) and while most
From a developer perspective, I would avoid software that is released under the CeCILL like it was some diseased, virus infected piece of software. I wouldn't even want to open the software to examine its internal workings, for fear of "contamination". That is the real point of going through this exercise, is that this group wants to have their license widely distributed, or at least have their software adoped widely with this license.
Ultimately, this is another case of "Don't try this at home". RMS took quite a bit of time trying to come up with the GPL, and even he got it wrong the first time. Writing an open source license that grants freedom to copy but preserves copyright is not a trivial thing. In addition, the writing process of an open license can't be done in a traditional committee, but the process must also be open and subject to change if the community finds holes in the license. I just don't see the CeCILL having gone through that process, particuarly with the holes mentioned here.
Re:Differnt languages in different countries (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if the license might in theory legally binding on you, it would be highly improbably that any court would find that a claim by you to have licensed the code under certain terms would not consistute estoppel if you claimed as truth that people could distribute the software under the terms of the GPL.
In fact, it goes further than that. If you assert that your software is licensed under the GPL, and that by placing the software under the GPL you're allowing people to do Foo with it, then you will be prevented from later suing people for violating the GPL even if Foo is a violation of the license.
This principle is meant to provide safety that you can rely on statements from someone without needing to have every little detail agreed in writing.
(The term "estoppel" came to English from French, btw.)
ObDisclaimer: IANAL
Re:About time (Score:2, Interesting)
So basically, I think this means that a French developer could release software under CeCILL, then anyone can treat it as GPL software if it's more convenient for them. Very nice!
OT: IANAL (Score:3, Interesting)
Quote: IANAL either.
Are there any lawyers on
Re:About time (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the GNU GPL FAQ linked by you, GPL compatibility means that there is a way of redistributing a combined work under GPL. This is why CeCILL-compatibility of the GPL license is not a requirement for GPL-compatibility of the CeCILL agreement. I will come back to this important point below.
I agree. But the agreement allows the licensee to relicense the software under the GPL, which is exactly what the FSF defines as GPL-compatibility: "The GPL permits such a combination provided it is released under the GNU GPL. The other license is compatible with the GPL if it permits this too."
If you are European laywer familiar with French copyright law, then please be more specific. Otherwiseit would be nice if you could point me to a respectable web site supporting your accusation.
So how about calling it "GPL compatible license agreement" instead?
Wrong. The words "original person" appear nowhere in the license agreement, and you left out the second paragraph of section 5.3.4, which explicitly deals with creating modified software by inserting GPLed code into the software and then redistributing the combined work under the GPL.
You are confusing GPL-compatibility of CeCILL license agreement with CeCILL compatibility of the GPL license here. Users of the modified, GPLed software are not subject to the CeCILL license agreement any longer, because they have received all parts of the modified software under the GPL. Only the person creating the combined GPLed work is subject to the CeCILL agreement, which allows creating a modified version of the CeCILL'ed software and releasing it under the GPL.
There is no obligation in the CeCILL software agreement to release the modified version under the CeCILL software agreement only, which would indeed violate the GPL.
Nonsense. It doesn't matter whether the CeCILL license agreement confirms to the FSF free-software definition, or to any other free-software definition. A non-free license agreement can be GPL-compatible as long as the agreement allows to produce a combined work and to redistribute it under the terms of the GPL.