On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 03:04:33AM +0200, Uwe Stöhr wrote: > Because I'm a newbie in licence issues, I asked a german lawyer and he > explained me the german copyright as follows:
> If some one publishes copyright protectable material without any > copyright/license, he lost the copyright (he automatically renounces the > copyright). There is no way to get the copyright back, so it is forever > public domain. In Germany you are still the "Urheber". The corresponding rights stick to you no matter what you do. Even if you sell the right to make copies to someone else (which is possible), some rights are not transferable. For instance, you are the only one that has the right to say "I made this". You can't give this away or sell it. Another thing is that you are (at least over here) still responsible for any intentional damage you do _even if you put in a disclaimer_ saying for instance that you'll format the hard disk after ten days. And if you are unlucky with the judge presiding over your case this is not only true for intent, but also for 'grobe Fahrlaessigkeit' (don't know the English word, sorry) and if you happen to have an extremely unfortunate day it theoretically even may happen for plain 'Fahrlaessig- keit', i.e. each and every bug you happen to have overlooked in your code. [I am not aware of any real case for the latter, though, and for some strange reason I have the impression that German rulings are less arbitrary than those on the other sides of certain big ponds. So I don't think you'll ever have to pay for a bug in free software as long as you know where to put your feet.] > That means cvs2lyx is public domain in german law, There is no such thing as 'public domain' in German law. Not even remotely. However, a couple of months ago a Munich court told some company to release the sources to some piece of software in which they incorporated GPL'ed code. So even if German law is not Case Law, one seems to walk on the safe side with GPL in this country. > you can read (in german) that the GPL was only once proofed by an > official court: > > "Damit ist endgültig klar, dass das GPL-Modell auch nach deutschem > Recht funktioniert", frohlockte Rechtsanwalt Till Jaeger, der das > Projekt netfilter/iptables vertritt, im Gespräch mit heise online. > Nach diesem "wohl weltweit ersten Urteil zur Wirksamkeit und > Durchsetzbarkeit der GPL" sei sichergestellt, dass die > Open-Source-Gemeinde wehrhaft ist. Oehm ja. Das meinte ich ;-) > In english: > > "Now it is clearified, that the GPL-model works under the german law", > rejoiced the lawyer Till Jaeger, who appeared for the project > netfilter/iptables, in the interview with heise online. After this > "probably worldwide unique judgment for the effectivity and > enforceability of the GPL" it is assured, that the open source > community is well-fortified. > > That means that nobody knows if the GPL is valid in other countries. Indeed. > Astonishing, isn't it? Not really, as part of the FSF's policy seems to be not to try the licence in courts. Which - given the random nature of certain courts - might be a wise thing... Andre'
