Towards an OSS License for Europe?

Transcription

1 Towards an OSS License for Europe? IDABC Workshop at LinuxTag 2005, 23 June 2005 by Dr. Till Jaeger, attorney at law

2 Agenda 1. Status Quo of Free Software Licensing 2. Types of Free Software Licenses 3. Legal Problems of Existing Free Software Licenses 4. Pros and Cons of a European Free Software License 5. Necessary Elements of a Possible New License

3 Status Quo Hundreds of different Free Software Licenses Limited number of relevant licenses: GPL, LGPL, BSD/Apache, MPL, CPL... Reasons: Relevance of the corresponding software, type of the license Relevant licenses were written under US law (for historical reasons)

4 Types of Free Software Licenses Grant of rights is more or less identical due to the Open Source Definition and Free Software Definition Differences accrue from provisions about how to license modifications of the software Copyleft: Modifications if distributed have to be licensed under the original Open Source license

5 Types of Free Software Licenses Non-copyleft licenses: modifications can be licensed under a proprietary license (BSD, Apache Software License) Licenses with strong copyleft: all derivative works have to be licensed under the original license (GPL, CPL) Licenses with limited copyleft: combination of software components is possible under difference licenses (LGPL, MPL)

6 Legal Problems of Existing Free Software Licenses Enforceability? Judgement of District Munich Court I dated May 19, 2004 (and several other preliminary injunctions) GPL is enforceable outside the USA Other Free Software Licenses are less strict (copyright infringement breach of contract)

7 Legal Problems of Existing Free Software Licenses Differences between Copyright Law and Author's Rights System Consideration of moral rights Right to appropriate compensation ( Linux-clause ) Owner of copyright

8 Legal Problems of Existing Free Software Licenses Contract law Warranty and liability clauses are invalid under German Law Applicable law and interpretation of clauses is difficult Free Software licenses are General terms and conditions

9 Legal Problems of Existing Free Software Licenses New versions of the license License have to be adapted from time to time for reasons of legal or technical evolution Relicensing is often extremly difficult Lack of democracy changes of Free Software Licenses are similar to law making

10 Pros and Cons of a European Free Software License Pros Elimination of legal flaws adaption to harmonized European law Emphasizing the European element in relation to the US Control of modifications of the license (?)

11 Pros and Cons of a European Free Software License Cons Complex bulk of licenses Compatibility of Free Software Licenses (i.e. combination of software modules), in case of Copyleft Licenses Acceptance?

12 Necessary Elements of a Possible New License Compatibility with existing Free Software Licenses (GPL) Democratic approach Comparision of the legal situations in all EU member states, multilingual license text Consideration of the international development model (i.e. US law, Indian law, Chinese law)?

13 Further Information