Re: [Kreatecd-devel] Licensing issues

[Joseph W. <jo...@bi...>]

Hi

> This article really got me thinking. The
> "This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
> it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
> the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
> (at your option) any later version."
>
> line is quite dangerous. what if the FSF (or whoever owns the license)
> decides to release a new version with a commercial clausule (so the fSF may
> sell commercial licenses...) we can't do anything about it.
>

I don't know about other countries, but as far as I know these lines aren't 
effective at least in Germany and Austria. (In America they workd). In 
Germany/Austria "or (at your option) any later version." is not backed by law 
-> you will have to explicitly specify, if you want the user to be able to 
use GPL 3, .....

At least in Germany/Austria, there are some otther things not backed by the 
law. eg the paragraph talking about no liabilty in general. The author can be 
held liable in Germany/Austra, althought he puts this lines into the 
licencse. (eg if he knows about a severe problem, which eg can cause data 
loss, but doesn't inform the user that this possibility exists, or if he 
WANTS to damage something/someone/... with her/his software)

I'm no lawyer though, just heard something about it  at LinuxTag in Stuttgart.

Joseph Wenninger