On 12-03-2008, Vincent Hanquez <tab@snarc.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 02:22:26PM +0000, Sylvain Le Gall wrote:
>> Most of the GPL stuff are copyright FSF, which is indeed not legal in
>> France. Following what you say, almost the full GNU tools suite is not
>> legal in France
>
> what kind of logic is that ?

Don't look for logic -- we are already talking about law which you can
take as "axiom" ;-)

Maybe, i don't have made a very "logic" sentence. It was just to say
something like "every piece of GNU software written by french people are
out-of-law". But i am not a lawyer, so only take this as "I think" or "I
have heard somewhere that". 

> copyright assignment can be legal in others countries [1], that's
> doesn't means the software becomes illegal when use in France.
>

In fact copyright assignement is legal in France, if you state every
author right you assign.

Let takes an example. Cecill is a french license that is good regarding
IP in France.

Cecill:
http://www.cecill.info/licences/Licence_CeCILL_V2-fr.html

IP in France:
http://www.guideinformatique.com/fiche-droit_dauteur_sur_les_logiciels-721.htm

If you read carefully, you will see that "in french" some rights are
given (Art 5.1 of Cecill):
- "la reproduction permanente ou provisoire du Logiciel"
- "le droit de traduire, d'adapter, d'arranger ou d'apporter toute autre
  modification au Logiciel"
- "Le droit de distribution comporte notamment le droit de diffuser, de
  transmettre et de communiquer le Logiciel au public sur tout support
  et par tout moyen

And in IP law:
Droits patrimoniaux
# la reproduction permanente ou provisoire d'un logiciel
# la traduction, l'adaptation, l'arrangement 
...

Even if in the spirit the GPL doesn't prevent this, it is not written
exactly in the good term (remember, we are talking about law).

> btw not most GPL stuff are copyrighted FSF.

FSF encourages people using GPL to give away their copyright for a better
"defense" of OSS. I.e. if something goes wrong FSF has the right to
defend the case.

Extract from "Why the FSF gets copyright assignments from contributors"
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/why-assign.html

"In order to make sure that all of our copyrights can meet the
recordkeeping and other requirements of registration, and in order to be
able to enforce the GPL most effectively, FSF requires that each author
of code incorporated in FSF projects provide a copyright assignment,
and, where appropriate, a disclaimer of any work-for-hire ownership
claims by the programmer's employer. That way we can be sure that all
the code in FSF projects is free code, whose freedom we can most
effectively protect, and therefore on which other developers can
completely rely."

But indeed, this is for FSF related project (i was talking about GNU
tools).

> I certainly don't agree with this kind of pratice and it won't happen on
> any software i'm "authoring".

Mine also -- even under GPL/LGPL, i keep the copyright. 

Well here is my little usual phrase: "this is the last post about this
topic" because this is Out-Of-Topic or has been discussed already too
long.

Regards,
Sylvain Le Gall