Tor-Einar Jarnbjo wrote:
Geir Magnusson Jr schrieb:
I would further argue that if the author must retain right to revoke
the license or have control over derivative works, then open source is
impossible in Germany.
Obiously it is not, as long as the software users accept the potenial
risk of having to replace the software with something else. The
revokation right is not my interpretation, but very clearly stated in
the law.
It's not OSS if the author can do that arbitrarily. Think about it -
you could wait until something is really popular, and then go shake down
every user using it...
Given that there is plenty of open-source activity in Germany - and
serious efforts - I think that we're misunderstanding something
fundamental about German copyright law.
It is unfortunately not very uncommon that German companies have a
policy not to use OS software at all, partly because of the unclear
legal status and potential problems, which may arise with a legal
dispute, partly because of other issues, e.g. not having anyone to sue
if something goes wrong.
Heh.
As I was working for Siemens 5-6 years ago,
this limitiation was so strict, that we were not even allowed to use
open source text editors (e.g. vi or Emacs) to write code, but were
forced to use a very poor and annoying product, as there were not really
many options when you have to find a commercial text editor for HP-UX.
Double heh.
geir