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5) Roughly.

There may be other reasons under French 
law why the  GPL may be invalid.



-----  Whole Article. -----------


Freedom(a) is worth more than these 
imperfect licences.


Specialised lawyers look at the GPL.



Lawyer Cyril Rojinsky (duly appointed to 
the court) and the jurist Vincent Grynbaum, both 
specialised in the area of intellectual property 
examine the "free" licences and in particular the 
GPL. They have published their study
in the review "Proprietes intellectuelles 
(Intellectual property)[1]" and their
conclusion is grim.


Their approach is interesting. The problem for 
them is not to know whether freedom is valid under 
French law (for them the question is a moot point)
but rather they asked themselves about the form 
and the content of the text of free licences, and 
in particular the GPL. The problem is not free 
programmes, but rather the licence contracts of 
free programmes.



Absence of critical clauses.



The authors tell us that first of all, the 
reference to "copyright" is not legally 
sufficient in the framework of international 
contracts  (which is the case of licence 
contracts for programmes developed and spread 
via the Internet). The idea of copyright can 
basically include differences from one country 
to another. This is why, under international 
contracts, it is necessary to specify to which 
laws one is referring (French law, American &c.).

The authors only found three public licences 
which were correctly formulated on this point: 
QPL, IBM Public Licence and the Mozilla Public
Licence).



Specification in the English language.



Next, the authors remind us that (at least in 
France), no clause in a contract may be contrary 
to French law [2]. However, it turns out that a 
licence such as the GPL is contrary to French law 
in several respects. Firstly, it is written in 
English and the FSF doesn't officially approve 
translations. 

The "Toubon law" obliges this sort 
of contract to be written in French, including for 
businesses since the notion of "user" applies not 
only to consumers, but also to businesses, 
professionals &c. 


Contacted by the editors of LinuxFrench, 
lawyer Cyril Rojinsky declared that, as 
far as business is concerned, the "Toubon 
law" is probably doomed to change since 
it is in contradiction of European directives 
on the subject, but whatever about that, the 
problem is still valid for individuals, and 
while waiting for it (French law) to change, 
French companies have to deal with it, since 
it is the law of the land.


A programme under the GPL can suddenly 
change licence.


Another problem, much more serious, is 
that according to French law, the author of 
a free programme can, at any time, invoke 
the invalidity of the licence for this 
software by simply changing the licence.


In effect, the law of intellectual 
property stipulates that the granting of  
rights by the author is subordinate to 
the condition that each of these granted 
rights be the object of a distinct clause 
in the granting act (i.e. the licence) and 
that the granting of any such rights be 
delimited with respect to its scope and its 
grantees, and also with respect to its 
location (i.e. where such rights may be 
excersised)  and duration of any such grants. 
[3] This is not the case of the GPL nor of
other free licences. Briefly, this means