Marc Lavallée wrote:
another point: except for japanese jurisdiction, the licenses have not been adapted to national laws.
That's good news from Japan, but it doesn't prove that the GPL is invalid elsewhere; it was carefully crafted to not require adaptation to national laws.
i think pi was referring to the CC-licenses not to the GPL.
in fact i am quite sure that they aren't worth anything in europe. there have been some cases proving that GPL is valid in germany -
Most people don't go to court when violating the GPL, because it's difficult to win against it; the NetFilter vs Sitecom case is a good example.
even though probably no-one will go to court when a free-license is violated, it is still important that there is some legal background .
yet it took many years and thousands of files licensed under it to make it "established law" - the situation is different with CC.
I don't see much differences since the CC promote the use of free licenses. Are you suggesting to wait many years before using the CC licenses?
not necessarily. pi just points out, that it took years for the GPL to become established law. successor-licenses (like CC) will most probably get "established" much faster.
now the circulus vitiosus is, that the CC will never get "established" when no-one uses it because it is not "established".
but i do think, that there must be no doubt that the chosen license is compatible with the documenter's national law - and this includes (besides japan) of course, the US-law and (which is particularily important for me) european law. (and of course all the others i have no time nor knowledge to mention)
but maybe it is better to chose a CC license than any more obscure or no at all or an inapplicable (like GPL afaik).
The GPL is very simple: it makes any user not respecting it a counterfeiter. It might be difficult to understand (like most licenses), but not to apply.
the question is rather (as i understand it, and i am not an expert with licensing at all): can the GPL be applied to documentation (read: articles, manuals,...) at all ? it is not meant for this type of texts, that is why they have written the GFDL.
mfg.asd.r IOhannes