Simetrical wrote:
On 11/15/06, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Not necessarily so. I was told that in the Netherlands it is not even possible to irrevocably license something.
Yeah, that's probably true in a whole bunch of jurisdictions. "Moral rights" (which generally don't exist in common-law jurisdictions but do in civil-law ones) are typically impossible to sign away. And then maybe in some jurisdictions you have provisions like you have in US contract law, where you can't give away something for nothing . . . my impression is that that's not applicable under US *license* law, which for some reason is different, but I don't know if that's true everywhere.
Anyway, the courts have upheld the GPL in the US, but I wouldn't be surprised if sometime soon it's struck down someplace in Europe or wherever. So it goes.
Hoi, The GPL has been upheld in Germany too. The issues were all where a second party infringed on the rights under the license. This is different from the GPL or GFDL license for that matter being withdrawn by the copyright holder.
I hope we will never get to see such a sorry affair in court. Thanks, GerardM