French To Ban Free Software?, free software licences Options

[ramjac]

Hello,

this is a cool website concept. I have used it earlier this week to download some stuff and I registered here today as this seems an interesting place to discuss something that has cropped up in the forum at http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/ that is, that the French Parliament is on the verge of a move or Orwellian proportions regarding free software:

FSF France press release. Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture. SNEP and SCPP tell Free Software authors: "You shall change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill pass in the Parliament.

I post a few more relevant links below, and ask; are there any French developers here at dontcrack.com or forum users who can shed any light on this, and does anybody have a perspective on this matter? Does anyone even think it significant or am I just being paranoid?

French Parliament addresses this tomorrow (22nd Dec)

http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html

definitions and examples of free software:

http://www.april.org/articles/intro/ll_exemples.html.en

another article:

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/12/02/franc...ut_to_get_.html

Bon Soiree

[DontCrack]

HI Ramjak,

Welcome at DontCrac[k] and thanks for the nice words.

Yeah this is a shame

I am sure that lots of French programmers and citizens are very worried about such political attitude. We at DontCrac[k] struggle against piracy but can't support such censure...

I just read a great thread about this here on the french side of MacMusic for those that can follow up with the languadge :

http://www.macmusic.org/agora/forums/?lang...29&t=24128&st=0

Thanks for your post.

Eric