Translations of the GPL in Europe

[Institutsleitung]

Hello to all "Legal Workers" of the FSF-Europe,

We are very glad to see the beginning of an european debate about legal aspects of free software, we will try to participate in this debate as regulary as possible.

Congratulations to FSFE-France, your work on an authoritative translation of the GPL seems to be the most developed project of legal work in Europe. It must be one of the first objectives of European Free Software jurists to manage projects of authoritative translations of the GPL and the Lesser GPL.

To introduce ourselves: We are working on the legal aspects of Free Software since spring 1999. Our study "German Copyright Law and Open Source Software" was published in 1999 in German language (GRUR Int. 1999, 839) and in january 2001 in English language (IIC 2001, 52). The english text is available as a PDF-Document on our website www.ifross.de. In january 2000 we founded the "Institute for legal aspects of Open Source Software" to build a platform for courses, discussions and our publications on Free Software. We chose the term "Open Source" at the time, because the phenomen "Free Software" wasn't very known at the time in the german legal public and we feared that the legal public could mix up the terms "free software" and "freeware". At the time we had no idea about the philosophical ditch between Free and Open Source Software. Now, ifrOSS is well known in Germany, we're consultated by the german Governement and the European Commission in Bruxelles. Though we're working most of our time on Free Software and though we spend a lot of our energy to promote Free Software, it would be a tactical failure for Free Software to change the name of our institute.

We are convinced that the Free Software Movement is not only a good way to write better software. Free Software is more than that, it intends to create a refuge for Freedom in the information society. ifrOSS is working hard on protecting that refuge of Freedom. Though we're no software engineers and therefore we are no real members of the community, we're are convinced that the Free Software must be legally possible in a world of property rights. >From that point of view, Free Software is a Civil Rights Subject, ifrOSS is working on.

Till is working as a lawyer in Berlin, Axel is teaching at the University of Hamburg. At the moment we're are working on a book about the legal aspects of Free and Open Source Software. The idea of ifrOSS is to combine the advantage of a practical legal work and a scientific backround with publications in legal revues. We regret, that we cannot come to the meeting of french legal experts and Eben Moglen in Bordeaux in july. We both will have the oral examination for our PhD in German and French Copyright Law at the time. Nevertheless, we are very interested in informations about the results of the meeting and the foregoing of the French-GPL project.

In our opinion, it is very important to work in a European Network of Free Software Lawyers to manage a legal security for Free Sofware in Europe. The GPL is made with regard to American Copyright Law. To speak about German Law: Most of the GPL is perfectly valid in Germany, but there are a some problems remaining concerning Copyright Law, Liability and Consumer Protection. Some of these problems will be the same for all continental european countries. For example, German and French Copyright Laws have a lot of parallelisms. It would be preferable to solve these poblems in a common way. This would be a modern and "harmonised" way of promoting legal security. From that point of view, it would be a good thing, if the French working group can try to stay in touch with us about the adaptions to French Law that you want to do in the French GPL.

A first step to provoke a real European debate must be to look for legal specialists in the other European Countries to tie a network of Copyleft lawyers. In our opinion it is absolutly necessary to find real specialist of copyright and patent law to ensure a serious legal work. An important factor of the success of Free Software is the high quality of the juristic work of the GPL. It would be a catastrophe to work in a amateurish way in this point.

A specialist for dutch law and Free Software is Daniel Koelman from the University of Amsterdam, who published a study about the GPL in a Dutch legal revue. He would be very interested to work in a European Network. Specialists from other Countries must be found.

We hope to find enough goodwill for a common european project on legal aspects of Free Software,

best regards,

Axel Metzger

Till Jaeger