Re: query from Georg Greve of GNU about Debian's opinion of the FDL

[Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.org>]

Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@debian.org>:

> > In any event, if non-common law countries have legal frameworks that
> > technically render Free Software as conceived by the FSF and the Debian
> > Project impossible, 
> 
> Pure FUD. See my rebuke of Nathanael Nerode's message that I just
> sent.

I think the truth is that some non-common-law countries (France?) have
laws relating to moral rights that might make it hard or impossible to
fully guarantee the DFSG-freedom of certain works, which may or may
not include works that would normally be described as "software". It's
a real problem, potentially, rather like the problem which may exist
in some common-law countries (Australia?) where contracts require
"consideration" and licences might be treated like contracts by the
courts. We probably don't need to change the GPL or the DFSG because
of these potential problems, but it's perhaps not a complete waste of
time to talk about them.

Edmund