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Re: GPL upheld on appeal in France


From: Alexander Terekhov
Subject: Re: GPL upheld on appeal in France
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:49:11 +0200

Some details about the ruling from folks who can read French. 

http://lwn.net/Articles/353967/

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GPL upheld in France

Posted Sep 23, 2009 20:38 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)

Parent article: GPL upheld in France 

I quickly read the ruling. Here a quick summary: The "standing to sue"
issue has not been addressed. The court appointed an expert to look at
the software and he found that: 

- the software (VNC) has been modified to hide the true copyright
holders, thus it is counterfeit. 

- the software (VNC) has been modified to include a back-door, thus it
is unfit for the stated purpose. 

and the court basically conclude that the client has been ripped off by
the vendor, so the issue was not decided on copyright law but on
standard commercial law which should apply anywhere. 

The most interesting point is the reliance on an expert that actually
look at the software. 
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GPL upheld in France

Posted Sep 25, 2009 0:21 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] 

I also read the ruling. Indeed the court does not seem to care about
copyrights here. This ordinary case is really about the (now bankrupt)
EDU4 company delivering too late and lying to their customer in a number
of ways - business as usual.

It is not even clear that EDU4 really tried to hide the GPL; it could be
that they just did not know what they were doing and "forgot" to display
the license. For their defense they claim that they would have finally
done everything right if they had not been dismissed before the final
deliverable, hahaha. (they were dismissed long after the deadline)

It is not clear either whether the hidden, hardcoded password was
intentional or just (extremely) poor programming practice. In any case
the security consequences seem to have touched a court's nerve.

By the way the contract was for setting up a number of classrooms
(hardware + software).
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How is that supposed to be a "GPL victory" know only brainwashed
GNUtians...

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.)


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