Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote:
On Tue, Nov 06, 2007 at 10:01:18PM +0530, Shriramana Sharma wrote:Seriously, does the FSF expect everyone who would modify a GPL-ed work or create a derivative work to read and understand his countries copyright laws?Ignorance of law is usually no defense in a court of law.
Yes in principle. Although in some countries (for example Belgium); courts usually interprets contracts as what a "normally educated people will understand". For example if some terms has a different meaning in the usual language and in the legal language; it is the former that should apply. I have even read a case (not about sofware but about insurance) where a clause has been declared invalid because the judge
has estimated that only a qualified lawyer could understand it.Now I do not say that is necessarily a problem for the GPL; but fear that this long and sometimes somewhat obscure language will cause more trouble than it solve.
Another problem with the GPL is that it is mentioned that only the English language version is valid while some law s(France ?) might requires a contract to be written in the local language.
Olive