Launch of First International FOSS Law Review

Graeme West writes "A group of tech lawyers has announced the release of the inaugural issue of the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSS L. Rev.) — a place for high-level discussion of issues and best practice in the implementation of FOSS. You can view the announcement, or skip straight to Volume 1, Issue 1. A downloadable PDF file is also available. The journal is open access, and articles are CC licensed."

Re:EU legals

[aaribaud]

Er... I don't see how a license, even one backed by the EU, would change anything legally: it is not a law, and would not change a iota to the legal situation of anyone *not* using it. It *could* affect those using it, though, but its mere existence would not make it legal per se.

Re:EU legals

[aaribaud]

I understand your point, but I'm afraid this is a false sense of safety you're relying upon. The question of translations aside (as translations are not a legal tool per se) the EUPL has indeed been carefully designed so as to be legal in any european country--or more precisely, as legal as it goes. As for the GPL, I fail to see how, as you seem to imply by comparison, it would "not consider the european legal systems", since it has been tested in French and German courts during actual trials, and found legal -- a feat that, ironically, EUPL cannot claim :)

Re:EU legals

[ianmacfarlane]

On the subject of the GPLv3 and internationalisation, it's worth reminding people that one of the key objectives of it was to be more legally sound in jurisdictions other than the US. There are several ways it does this - replaces references to US laws with international references (e.g. WIPO), the patent license (GPLv2/BSD/etc in the US have an implied patent license, some other countries do not), and watching the wording in general.

-

Whatever the 'downsides' attributed to the GPLv3 by some people (mostly about the "tivoisation" clause), there are many benefits. For those outside of the US, this aspect alone of the GPLv3 is very important.

Re:International? More like Commonwealth and US

[gwest]

I'm an editorial coordinator for IFOSS L. Rev. (and the submitter of this story), so I thought I should point out a couple of things.

The paper seem to focus on case law.

Actually, there's only one case law report in the journal. Out of the main articles, only Lawrence Rosen's article could be said to rely primarily on case law.

Yeah, I know that even something that only involves two countries could be called "international"

If you take a look at the current make-up of the Editorial Committee [ifosslr.org], you'll see that it is truly international. The Committee works on a rotating basis, so it'll always have a diverse make-up.