> For the francophones among you, this article is a summary of the
> reasons why most free software licences (and the GPL in
> Google translation (hard to read most of the time, but good
> In brief, in an international contract, when mentioning copyright,  you
> must mention under which jurisdiction's laws the copyright
> is applied. French law requires the licence to be available in
> French (the GPL isn't). And French law requires that for a
> contract to be valid, it must not breach existing law. Also under
> French law, the copyright holder automatically retains the right
> to change the licence, which means that French law is in conflict
> with the GPL, which requires authorisation from all authors
> Also there's some stuff about French consumer law forbidding sale
> without guarantee of anything, so software delivered as-is
> breaches consumer law in France. But I didn't really follow that.
My French is a bit iffy these days, but if this is true, does it not also
nullify Microsoft, Adobe and WinZip licences amongst most others? These all
claim no liability, no guarantees (M$ say delivered "with all faults", so

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