Re: GPL [***NOT***] upheld on appeal in France

[Alexander Terekhov]

Hyman Rosen wrote:

[... "GPL-wins-in-French-court-case" brouhaha ... ]

> AFPA is awarded €8,000 plus legal fees.

Hey Hyman, take that.

http://www.ifosslr.org/ifosslr/article/view/17/42

"No GPL License Enforcement

Not a single claim (by either party), as cited in the court’s decision,
is based on (i) the GPL, (ii) any interpretation of the GPL or any of
its terms as a contract, or (iii) any right established by law, such as
the French Code on Intellectual Property (Code de la propriété
intellectuelle), which contains the provisions establishing copyright,
or the right of the author, in France.

[...]

This article has demonstrated that the news reported on the Internet
concerning EDU 4 v. AFPA was, from a legal point of view, misleading6.
It may be that the reporting suffered from erroneous understanding of
the decision or was motivated by the desire for quick publicity and by
an interest in the open source phenomenon. Some writers who reported
this story undoubtedly strive to support the open source or free
software phenomenon. But such support cannot be achieved by an
unprofessional journalistic approach to matters of legal analysis.
Unprofessionalism in such an area tends to reinforce the false belief
that open source is solely a matter of non-professional software
development. As a licensing model, open source should be treated like
any other area of human life; legal analysis of open source issues
should be guided by professionals.

6 Of course, one might say that it is not at all unusual that legal
questions raised on the internet are handled in a misleading, incorrect
or even false way, whether they relate to open source or something else.

Vol. 1, Issue 2 International Free and Open Source Software Law Review"

regards,
alexander.

--
http://gng.z505.com/index.htm 
(GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can 
be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards 
too, whereas GNU cannot.)