Philipp Thomas <Philipp.Thomas2@gmx.net> wrote:
On Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:00:25 +0200, you wrote:
And I thought OSS (mainly the GPL) was based on copyleft rather than copyright.
At least in german law you *never* loose your copyright. You can transfer the right of commercial exploitation but unlike anglo-saxton law you can't sell the copyright itself.
Only the GPL is based on copyleft, there are lots of other OSS licenses that retain the copyright. See the BSD license for a prominent example.
Most of what is commonly believed about the GPL is wrong even in the USA. Please read this: http://www.rosenlaw.com/Rosen_Ch06.pdf to learn what cannot be enforced in court even in the USA. It seems that the US legal system (with repsect to the Copyright) is not too different from what is usual in the rest of the world. A common mistake is to believe the GPL FAQ from the FSF that is mostly unrelated to the GPL text. The main difference between Europe and the USA is that you cannot give up the Copyright in Europe and that you cannot establish a contract that tries to break the law. As a funny side note: the wife of Eric Raymond is lawyer and she wrote a paper that verifies that even in the USA, people with minor contributions cannot govern important facts for "marketing" which in OSS terms means e.g. chosing the license. This verifies, that you need to ask at most 20 people is you like to change the license that is used for the Linux kernel. The EU law system is mainly based on German and French legal system. Many other countries in the worls did copy the legal system from France or Germany (Turkey did e.g. mainly copy the German system). The reason is that the modern legal system in European countries is based on the "Code Nepoleon" - a late result from the french revolution. Many areas have been occupoed by Nepoleon and inherited the French legal system or (if they have not been occupied by Napoleon) they forced their land lords to convert to a legal system that gives more freedom. Jörg -- EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org