>From: Lourens Veen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Preface: I am sorry, but it seems that you don't know much about
>> =09Copyright issues :-( Many of your statements are completely
>> =09wrong and none of your mails from the last night has been
>> helpful.
>>
>> For a decent discussion on this topic it is important that we use
>> correct verbalizations. Unfortunately, the English language is
>> not very precise here....
>> [...explanation of _German_ copyright system...]
The European copyright system is either the same as the German copyright
system or the deviations are of minor nature..... note that the European
Union does not allow a country to deviate in major aspects from European
law.
>From what I know, all continental European countries have mostly identical
copyright systems. It may be that Great Britain has some left over bigger
differences. Note that the English right system is derived from Roman Law
and the Right system used in continental European countries is derived
from modern ideas from the French Revolution (4.7.1795).
The USA still use a right system based on the English right system...
>I believe we need to make a clear distinction between the German=20
>copyright laws and the American copyright laws. Unfortunately,=20
>there seem to be some major differences here, and given what you=20
>wrote I'm not even sure if the GPL makes sense at all in the=20
>context of German (and probably other European) copyright law.
Well, we are in Germany so German law applies!
>> If there is an author who owns the authorship rights for the work
>> (like it is true for me with e.g. cdrecord), this author is the
>> only person who may decide on authorship right issues.
>>
>> As libscg is a major contribution from me to the cdrdao project,
>> I would be able to put a veto on this. But as I already did allow
>> cdrecord to be linked with libedc it is obvious that I don't use
>> my veto right here.
>That's what I mean. The whole idea of the GPL is that if you put=20
>your software under GPL, then everyone will be able to use it as=20
>long as the terms of the GPL are satisfied. If the original author=20
>can still veto anything that happens with the code it can't be free=20
>software as in the FSF definition.
This is not even correct inside the USA. The fact that you cannot replace the
GPL by something else only applies to secondary distributions. The author
may always have a e.g. second distribution under a different license.
If he uses his right to do so and only updates the non GPL version, then
the GPL version may become outdated after some time....
>Perhaps the FSF should be notified and/or asked about this? Seems to=20
>me like it might be a major problem.
>From reading FSF mailing lists on a regular base I can tell you that this
will not help. FSF Europe is a gossip club and FSF USA will most likely
give you advise based on US right.
J�rg
EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) J�rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
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URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix
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