[ajnin]

It's going to be interesting because it's in Germany, which is in Europe. There's been a recent court case in France that ruled that copyright claims based on the GPL were invalid because it is a contract, and you can't claim both copyright and a contract on something, so it should be dealt with in civil contract court. (Or in other words, granting a license like the GPL invalidates all copyright claims you might have in the future!)

The article is quite light on details, I wonder on what exact grounds they filed their claim.

[jrochkind1]

> you can't claim both copyright and a contract on something,

That makes no sense to me. Licensing copyrighted work is pretty standard, and it must be in France too? The GPL is a license, which is indeed a contract. But surely people license (enter into a contract between copyright holder and user which grants certain allowed uses) copyrighted work in France routinely?

[londons_explore]

I think the distinction is that if the parties involved don't have a contract between them, copyright law applies.

But if there is a contract in place, then copyright law no longer applies, and you instead have to resolve any disputes as if they were violations of a contract.

The difficulty being that the GPL allows anyone to enter into a contract without even consent of the other party, and the contract law courts may not see that as a valid contract.

[dragonwriter]

> The difficulty being that the GPL allows anyone to enter into a contract without even consent of the other party

No, it doesn't. Voluntarily, publicly offering the GPL as license terms is consenting to others accepting that offer.

[Vespasian]

This is a civil case if I am not mistaken. Earlier cases in Germany where decided in favour of the obligations of the GPL.

[sva_]

I think the case you're thinking of was in France:

https://thehftguy.com/2020/09/15/french-judge-rules-gpl-lice...

[GauntletWizard]

I can't even imagine what that means. How do stock photos work in France?

[yellow_lead]

So both cases are in Europe?