Transcript of SFP#12: Enforcement of the GNU GPL with Till Jaeger
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WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:17.020 Welcome to the Software Freedom Podcast. 00:17.020 --> 00:20.360 This podcast is presented to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe. 00:20.360 --> 00:24.260 We are a charity that empowers users to control technology. 00:24.260 --> 00:28.220 I'm Matthias Kirchner, the President of the Free Software Foundation Europe. 00:28.220 --> 00:30.220 Our guest today is Till Jäger. 00:30.220 --> 00:35.380 Till is a certified copyright and media law attorney and has worked for JBB Rechtsanvelidesens 00:35.380 --> 00:37.060 2001. 00:37.060 --> 00:42.540 His day job is to advise large and medium sized IT businesses as well as government authorities 00:42.540 --> 00:48.500 and software developers on matter involving contracts, licensing and online use. 00:48.500 --> 00:53.820 In his work he particularly focused on legal issues created by Free Software. 00:53.820 --> 00:58.840 He also represented the GPL violations.org project in several lawsuits to enforce the 00:58.840 --> 01:00.140 GNUGPL. 01:00.140 --> 01:05.540 Has published several articles and books related to legal questions about Free Software. 01:05.540 --> 01:10.020 And Till was also involved in a GNUGPL 3 drafting process. 01:10.020 --> 01:11.340 Hello Till. 01:11.340 --> 01:14.300 Hello Matthias, thanks for inviting me. 01:14.300 --> 01:21.740 So when I looked back into when we met first I found out that that was in 2005 at the 01:21.740 --> 01:24.340 GNUG Starg in Karlsruhe. 01:24.340 --> 01:30.580 But actually I then also found out that even earlier in March 2004 I found the first 01:30.580 --> 01:37.260 email between the two of us where you helped the FSFE to figure out some label law issues 01:37.260 --> 01:41.460 so that I could be the first intern of the FSFE. 01:41.460 --> 01:49.820 But when I found out about this stuff I realized that I never asked you how you actually 01:49.820 --> 01:51.820 got involved in Free Software. 01:51.820 --> 01:59.380 Oh, that's really a story a long time ago, even last millennium. 01:59.380 --> 02:04.260 Actually it was in April 99. 02:04.260 --> 02:11.020 I had a party in my apartment in Munich when I was doing my PhD thesis in the Max Planck 02:11.020 --> 02:17.660 Institute about copyright matters and classical copyright law. 02:17.660 --> 02:25.620 And the friend told me and another colleague, Axel Metzka, who is now a professor at the 02:25.620 --> 02:33.900 Humboldt University here in Berlin, about the GPL and the license that permits unrestricted 02:33.900 --> 02:39.380 modification of a copyrighted work and we said, oh wow, that's an interesting concept. 02:39.380 --> 02:42.980 How could that work under a German copyright law? 02:42.980 --> 02:50.140 And then we started digging a little bit into facts and asking people doing research, 02:50.140 --> 02:58.180 said, wow, that's really interesting and there's nothing in Germany about Free Software 02:58.180 --> 03:07.700 and a law and how it fits into the German legal system in particular, the copyright system. 03:07.700 --> 03:20.540 And so we started to write an article for a law journal in I think it was May 99. 03:20.540 --> 03:27.900 And when this article was published then it started a kind of a wave because as a first 03:27.900 --> 03:35.140 mover people are asking you and one of the first people contacting us was Gail Graver. 03:35.140 --> 03:41.780 And as you know, Gail Graver is the original founder of the Free Software Foundation 03:41.780 --> 03:48.980 Europe and he said, well, you know, writing an article about the open source software 03:48.980 --> 03:54.620 in the German legal system, do you know about free software and why do you don't call 03:54.620 --> 03:56.740 it free software? 03:56.740 --> 04:05.100 And it's true at that time in I think May 99, if you made a research, most people 04:05.100 --> 04:11.980 spoke about open source software and not about free software although the term open source 04:11.980 --> 04:15.460 software was invented in 98. 04:15.460 --> 04:23.700 So not even one year later, that was a prevailing term and so we started to discuss things. 04:23.700 --> 04:25.940 So that was the first and world one. 04:25.940 --> 04:26.940 Ah, okay. 04:26.940 --> 04:31.380 So that's how you then got in contact with Georg and the Georg was also then the person 04:31.380 --> 04:33.940 who introduced the two of us. 04:33.940 --> 04:42.300 So in, so one of the things that you're most famous for is the, is the, the court case, 04:42.300 --> 04:47.140 the first court case in the German court, which was about a new GPL together with Harald 04:47.140 --> 04:48.140 Veltem. 04:48.140 --> 04:50.700 That was in 2004. 04:50.700 --> 04:53.900 Can you tell us a little bit more about this decision? 04:53.900 --> 05:03.260 Yeah, I think of course it should be Harald to explain that, but Harald is very transparent 05:03.260 --> 05:06.940 about his ideas and why he did that enforcement. 05:06.940 --> 05:14.140 So it's, it's, it's not a secret or it's something I could not, could not tell you. 05:14.140 --> 05:23.020 And at that time, Harald was one of the first people concerned about GPL violations on the 05:23.020 --> 05:27.380 one hand and on the other hand, he was not afraid of lawyers. 05:27.380 --> 05:33.500 And as you know, in, in the field of developers, you, you will find a lot of people who are 05:33.500 --> 05:37.500 not really interested to have too much contact to lawyers. 05:37.500 --> 05:40.140 Harald is different in many ways. 05:40.140 --> 05:49.860 And so he wrote in, I think about 10 companies producing root routers and, and other stuff, 05:49.860 --> 05:56.980 explaining that there's a GPL violation and what to do and asking for the source code 05:56.980 --> 06:03.540 and stuff like that, with 10 letters at, I think, was CBIT trade fair, where he was walking 06:03.540 --> 06:08.860 around and handing out those papers to the companies present at CBIT in Hanover, right? 06:08.860 --> 06:09.860 Exactly. 06:09.860 --> 06:12.300 And yeah, what was the reaction? 06:12.300 --> 06:17.820 If I asked that in my trainings, the only question that's always correctly answered because 06:17.820 --> 06:19.980 people say, oh, of course, nothing. 06:19.980 --> 06:20.980 And that's true. 06:20.980 --> 06:22.780 He got no response. 06:22.780 --> 06:28.660 And then he tried to contact the Free Software Foundation in the US, who is far away, could 06:28.660 --> 06:31.980 not really do something here in Europe. 06:31.980 --> 06:39.660 And then he contacted me as a member of IFROS, the Institute of Legal Questions on Free 06:39.660 --> 06:45.860 and Open Source Software that I co-founded with Axel Medzka in the year 2000. 06:45.860 --> 06:52.540 So he contacted us and said, what is, from the legal perspective, can we enforce the 06:52.540 --> 06:55.780 GPL as that possible? 06:55.780 --> 07:04.820 And I told him, well, you know, on high C, and at court, there's always something, you 07:04.820 --> 07:08.660 are not completely sure if it works or not. 07:08.660 --> 07:12.620 And we cannot see any other court cases at that time. 07:12.620 --> 07:15.100 It probably would be the first one. 07:15.100 --> 07:21.420 So if you want to go to court, it's obvious that there is a certain risk. 07:21.420 --> 07:28.860 And he asked, so what's the risk and what how much I do I have to pay and I told him. 07:28.860 --> 07:33.740 And he was very clear in his decision, said, okay, I take that risk, I owe that personal 07:33.740 --> 07:37.340 financial risk to go to court and try to enforce. 07:37.340 --> 07:41.940 So that's how it started. 07:41.940 --> 07:44.860 So just because you mentioned it, that he could also talk about it. 07:44.860 --> 07:49.020 We also talked with Harald already before about some other topics. 07:49.020 --> 07:53.180 And you can listen to that episode when you go back to the archive. 07:53.180 --> 07:59.700 But back on this topic here, so then in 2004, that was then the first case. 07:59.700 --> 08:00.860 What was this about? 08:00.860 --> 08:02.900 So you started with Harald. 08:02.900 --> 08:07.700 He was convinced, okay, I take this risk, I want to do this, I want to have the licenses 08:07.700 --> 08:08.700 enforced. 08:08.700 --> 08:15.260 Yeah, I think the first case was the onnet case and that was settled out of court. 08:15.260 --> 08:17.860 So we made a settlement. 08:18.860 --> 08:23.580 And the first case at court was the side-com case. 08:23.580 --> 08:28.060 So we, the usual thing is under German law, you're sending a season. 08:28.060 --> 08:32.020 This is later on asking to fix the problem. 08:32.020 --> 08:38.300 Then we received not a declaration to season this is, but some blah, blah. 08:38.300 --> 08:45.420 That was not really fixing the problem, not no interest into entering into a settlement 08:45.420 --> 08:52.820 to make that out of court, and then yeah, we filed an application for preliminary injection 08:52.820 --> 08:56.940 at the Munich district court. 08:56.940 --> 09:03.620 And yeah, under German law, if there is copyright violation and we convince that was a crucial 09:03.620 --> 09:10.500 point in that case to convincing the court, that is not just a violation of a contractual 09:10.500 --> 09:13.940 agreement, but it's copyright infringement. 09:13.940 --> 09:21.420 Which was the hot topic from the legal perspective and the court agreed, and then it's, you 09:21.420 --> 09:24.700 receive a preliminary injection in a few days. 09:24.700 --> 09:30.580 And that means that the company in this case side-com is not permitted to redistribute 09:30.580 --> 09:37.060 the product anymore, as long as they are not GPL compliant. 09:37.060 --> 09:38.060 What happened next? 09:38.460 --> 09:44.780 Yeah, well, from the case, they made an objection. 09:44.780 --> 09:50.060 On the first place, if you go to court for an application, the court does not really ask 09:50.060 --> 09:59.860 the defendant to explain so, but they just say, okay, if you are, the facts are correct, 09:59.860 --> 10:06.500 that you have provided, and you have to give in declaration that all the facts are correct. 10:06.500 --> 10:12.980 And then it's a copyright infringement, and then side-com made an objection, and then 10:12.980 --> 10:20.140 there's a discussion at court, and then there's also a judgment with reasons. 10:20.140 --> 10:24.340 And this judgment is also translated into English. 10:24.340 --> 10:33.460 Is an important first court judgment about how a violation of GPL ends up in a copyright 10:33.460 --> 10:37.020 infringement, what are the reasons for that and how does it work? 10:37.020 --> 10:42.020 So that is an important first case. 10:42.020 --> 10:49.300 And yeah, what happens then, a lot of developments and new cases, so I think it was not the intention 10:49.300 --> 10:57.740 of Harold really to do that at large scale, but he was a little bit pushed by other developers 10:57.740 --> 11:02.020 who are not interested to do them themselves. 11:02.060 --> 11:10.060 He said, oh, look here, this product, or look here, it's also a Linux-based embedded system. 11:10.060 --> 11:15.740 We do not receive the source code, there's no information about the license, and so on. 11:15.740 --> 11:22.700 And that was the reason that Harold founded GPL violations.org and started to do more 11:22.700 --> 11:25.340 enforcement on the one hand. 11:25.340 --> 11:30.780 But also, I think he was one of the first ones to provide compliance information. 11:30.780 --> 11:36.940 So if you look at the website, you will find FAQs about how to provide a complete corresponding 11:36.940 --> 11:37.940 source code. 11:37.940 --> 11:42.060 What are your obligations under the GPL? 11:42.060 --> 11:50.940 So it was not just enforcing it, but also explaining to bring companies into compliance. 11:50.940 --> 12:00.060 And I think that's an important point of that enforcement that he initiated compliance 12:00.060 --> 12:03.980 in the whole IT industry, I would say. 12:03.980 --> 12:10.860 Yeah, Harold was also a big driver to help the FSV to set up the FSV legal network, 12:10.860 --> 12:15.700 where we also wanted to make sure that more people know about compliance work and more 12:15.700 --> 12:22.300 people know about what they can do to make sure that they don't end up with products, 12:22.300 --> 12:25.940 which are violating free software licenses. 12:25.940 --> 12:34.980 So what do you see when you look back now from the early days to nowadays? 12:34.980 --> 12:42.180 Do you think that the way how compliance work is done changed a lot through the availability 12:42.180 --> 12:50.020 of more information about how to use licenses and how to try to be compliant? 12:50.420 --> 12:56.980 Oh yeah, there's tremendous development, that's crazy. 12:56.980 --> 13:04.340 Because in the beginning, you have seen a few companies exchanging some PowerPoint slides 13:04.340 --> 13:10.140 to say, oh, what we are doing, we are providing simple things. 13:10.140 --> 13:18.100 But if you start to think more about compliance and how to implement that into a company process, 13:18.100 --> 13:26.420 then there are new questions, for example, license compatibility. 13:26.420 --> 13:30.420 How do you have to fulfill all the license obligations? 13:30.420 --> 13:32.020 What are the license obligations? 13:32.020 --> 13:33.860 How to interpret licenses? 13:33.860 --> 13:40.420 For example, complex licenses as LGBL, that's not easy at all. 13:40.420 --> 13:46.580 And that needs a lot of discussion explanation and exchange. 13:46.580 --> 13:54.100 And most company lawyers have not enough time to really dig into all the details. 13:54.100 --> 14:03.540 And if I'm right, I would say the majority of people working within companies are not lawyers. 14:03.540 --> 14:10.740 But engineers and engineers can handle legal compliance stuff, 14:10.740 --> 14:13.540 but they need input from the legal side. 14:13.540 --> 14:20.580 And there was always a lack on legal information in this field that is easy, accessible, 14:20.580 --> 14:26.820 and that can be practically used by compliance people within companies. 14:26.820 --> 14:35.220 And I think that is one of the important things that free software foundation Europe provided, 14:36.180 --> 14:44.580 starting from the legal and licensing workshop up to the legal network and exchanging emails, 14:44.580 --> 14:48.500 just asking your question, discussing how to do that best. 14:49.540 --> 14:53.380 Yeah, that helps, I think a lot. 14:53.940 --> 15:00.900 And nowadays we see that big companies have their own free and open-source software compliance 15:01.860 --> 15:06.660 departments that were unthinkable if you go 15 years ago. 15:07.620 --> 15:11.940 But yeah, sometimes they created their own problems, I would say. 15:13.940 --> 15:19.940 But on the other hand, the improvement is relevant. 15:19.940 --> 15:25.620 That's obvious. Nowadays you get much more products which are 15:25.620 --> 15:32.980 compliant or nearly compliant. And if you contact the company, then in most cases you will 15:32.980 --> 15:40.900 receive a response. And not as with Harold 15 years ago, just no response because nobody has 15:40.900 --> 15:47.460 a response. You just mentioned that they also created some problems through that. 15:48.660 --> 15:52.340 What kind of problems are you thinking about? Is that some companies that have more knowledge 15:52.900 --> 15:58.020 and now have a better defense that they try to circumvent the obligations they have through 15:58.020 --> 16:02.180 some free software licenses or what kind of problems are you thinking about? 16:02.180 --> 16:13.380 Well, I would say creating problem means, for example, that you look into the license text 16:14.100 --> 16:19.860 made a very thorough interpretation, say, oh, I'm unsure about how to do that. 16:19.860 --> 16:26.820 And then I have the strictest interpretation and I fulfill the license with regard to 16:26.820 --> 16:34.500 the strictest interpretation. And if one player in the IT market is providing that compliance 16:34.500 --> 16:40.580 on the strictest level, others say, oh, let's do the same way, it seems to be necessary. 16:40.580 --> 16:48.820 So that is what we can see sometimes the compliance is stricter than what perhaps most developers would 16:48.820 --> 16:59.220 expect, which makes more work, more problems to give you an example. Is it really necessary to 16:59.220 --> 17:10.900 extract all copyright notices from a huge software package and to provide it independently 17:10.900 --> 17:17.620 from the source code? That's a question you can ask. Nowadays it's the usual way, so you get a 17:17.620 --> 17:23.060 file with a long list of copyright notices. I'm asking you who is reading that nobody. 17:23.700 --> 17:29.140 And also why not just offering the source code and people who are interested can look into the 17:29.140 --> 17:35.220 source code, who are world-witch code. So from that's from the practical point of view, perhaps 17:36.980 --> 17:45.620 yeah, a little bit of over fulfilling, overcompliance. On the other hand, if you do not want to risk 17:46.340 --> 17:53.220 a lawsuit, if you don't want to risk a copyright infringement, you're careful. And I would say 17:53.220 --> 18:00.100 this is perhaps one of the biggest problems in this field because there's not enough exchange 18:00.100 --> 18:07.380 between compliance people and developers on the one hand. And on the other hand, we have licenses 18:08.340 --> 18:16.900 which are 30 years old or even even older. And 30 years ago it was the usual thing that you 18:16.900 --> 18:24.660 had one program, one license and perhaps one to three copyright holders. Nowadays you have software 18:24.660 --> 18:34.260 with 800 components, 70 licenses and hundreds of thousands of copyright owners. And the licenses 18:34.340 --> 18:40.980 are not written for that purpose. And the question is, is that really what people are interested in, 18:40.980 --> 18:46.420 what developers are interested in, or are they interested in easy access to the source code, 18:46.420 --> 18:55.540 and from a technical perspective. So that that's perhaps a follow-up of the negative side of 18:55.540 --> 19:02.660 that compliance work. When the FSFE, when we started the little network, one of the reasons was 19:02.660 --> 19:07.860 also at that time that we heard from a lot of developers that they want to use more free software 19:07.860 --> 19:14.020 in their companies. But then their legal department was blocking. No, no, we cannot use that because 19:14.020 --> 19:21.460 when we use GPL software, we have to publish all the software from our company or some other 19:21.460 --> 19:28.740 strange argumentation there. So what you described there, for a long time I had impression that 19:28.740 --> 19:33.700 it helped a lot of developers that the legal departments then were clearing things and they were 19:33.700 --> 19:39.700 allowed to use free software. Now with this very strict interpretation, do you also think that 19:39.700 --> 19:45.700 this is then something which not just adds work for the lawyers there and compliance departments, 19:45.700 --> 19:50.260 but also for the developers and companies if their legal departments are too strict? 19:50.740 --> 19:59.540 Well, I would say yeah, there is of course overhead, but on the other hand, if you want to have 19:59.540 --> 20:05.460 a compliant product, you need really to know what you're using, what the licenses are, otherwise 20:05.460 --> 20:12.500 you're not able to comply with such licenses. And therefore, I would say in most cases, 20:13.460 --> 20:20.980 this is not too restrictive for developers. There has been a lot of change. It's true that in the 20:20.980 --> 20:28.260 past some companies said you're not permitted to use free and open source software in your products 20:28.260 --> 20:34.180 that changed a lot because everybody knows it's impossible now for days to write your software 20:34.180 --> 20:43.220 without where your takes too much time, too much costs. Nowadays, I would say I don't know any 20:43.220 --> 20:52.180 clients of our law firm producing proprietary software without any free and open source components 20:52.180 --> 20:59.380 does not exist. First, little firmware or something like that next to the hardware that could happen, 20:59.860 --> 21:08.740 but most software contains free software at least partly. And therefore, it's very helpful, 21:08.740 --> 21:16.980 so it's not nowadays, it's not, oh, we have something strange license, so we don't want to do that. 21:16.980 --> 21:27.220 Nowadays, it's accepted and people know, well, we have to do a certain process to 21:27.220 --> 21:34.900 comply with the license, so that is that's usual business, I would say. Do you think that most of 21:36.340 --> 21:42.820 so that the legal cases in front of court that they helped a lot in making more companies out 21:42.820 --> 21:53.220 there on GPL compliant? Yes, to be honest, yes. If you have not the evidence that they can 21:53.220 --> 22:01.300 happen something, then people wait, they just wait what will happen. But if you have an example, 22:01.300 --> 22:07.700 a court case that there's look here, that are the legal consequences, then they start considering 22:07.700 --> 22:18.820 and dealing with that problem. So I would say, yes, it had an impact, whether or not this is 22:18.820 --> 22:27.860 one five 10 or 20 cases, I'm not sure that that makes a big deal, but that you can see it is 22:27.860 --> 22:36.660 enforceable and there are people who are interested that there's really compliance with the licenses 22:36.660 --> 22:41.540 that makes a major difference here. Do you think when you look back to all those years of compliance 22:41.620 --> 22:49.060 work, there are some cases which stand out of all those cases, which are very unique or 22:49.940 --> 22:55.780 very famous? Well, I would say, of course, the first one is perhaps the most important one. 22:56.500 --> 23:04.420 There are a few others, also some of them out of court, which might have the big influence because 23:05.380 --> 23:12.660 this was enforcement with a big player and some of the big players started to do internal 23:12.660 --> 23:21.460 enforcement work that has an impact for the whole supply chain. So I guess there are some cases, 23:21.460 --> 23:30.580 I don't want to name them here, but where the enforcement with regard to the company has changed 23:30.580 --> 23:40.660 a lot. From the cases at court, well, of course, there are always new aspects to discuss at court, 23:42.260 --> 23:53.860 and I would perhaps take one and not absolutely happy with outcome. This was the Skype case from 2007 23:54.500 --> 24:01.860 and it's a long story why that case came to court. I would say it was not necessary. It was 24:02.660 --> 24:09.220 they tried to trick her a little bit and the outcome was that the court said, well, 24:10.420 --> 24:19.140 providing the source code on a web server for download is not complying with GPL version 2, 24:20.020 --> 24:26.500 which is true from the mere wording of the license because the license says you have to provide a 24:26.500 --> 24:36.340 written offer on either on the one hand or you have to provide the source code on a device, 24:36.340 --> 24:44.100 on a typical device for exchanging software. That means a CD or a DVD or a USB 24:44.100 --> 24:52.180 stake or something like that, but just providing it for download is not sufficient. This is true in 1991 24:52.180 --> 25:00.180 that was the idea of the free software foundation when the FSF wrote GPL version 2 because at that 25:00.180 --> 25:07.540 time it was more expensive to download the program instead of sending it on a data carrier. 25:08.420 --> 25:18.260 But in 2007 or in nowadays, of course, that does not make really sense. So I would prefer that 25:19.540 --> 25:27.460 courts look not so much in the mere wording of the license but also in the intention and if you 25:27.460 --> 25:34.020 have access to the source code in which rate does not really matter. Is that something which you 25:34.020 --> 25:42.340 consider quite unique to Germany where most of the cases you worked on are happening or is that 25:42.340 --> 25:47.940 something you also saw in other countries that there are those very strict interpretations there? 25:49.460 --> 25:55.700 This is difficult to say because in the cases in most other countries are not so much 25:55.860 --> 26:01.140 classical enforcement cases where they are not so much about interpretation details 26:02.100 --> 26:09.380 or they are settled though they have not a detailed court decision with all the explanation so 26:10.500 --> 26:16.500 I cannot really tell you how the situation would be in courts from other countries. 26:18.020 --> 26:25.380 So that's still an open question and it could change so it's not something that is for all time 26:25.380 --> 26:33.300 needs to be as in this Skype decision but this is what we have at the moment and it makes 26:33.300 --> 26:43.060 compliance work more difficult than it should be. And staying on the topic of difference between 26:43.060 --> 26:50.180 countries in the GnuGPL version 3 drafting process you have been involved there together with 26:50.180 --> 26:57.220 Axel Metzger and you focused a lot on how to make sure that the newer version of the GnuGPL 26:57.220 --> 27:06.900 will then also work in different jurisdictions. So looking back those years now do you think that 27:06.900 --> 27:15.620 this was accomplished or what topics do you see where there would need to be changed to get to this 27:15.620 --> 27:23.060 goal that the GPL works in all countries? Well I think there's a lot of progress to be honest. 27:23.620 --> 27:30.980 So this was initially an idea by the free software foundation in the US to say well 27:32.980 --> 27:42.660 free software is used worldwide. Yes our license was written under the impression of US law. 27:42.660 --> 27:50.580 We want to change that though that's a very important step. And what you can see in GnuGPL 27:50.580 --> 28:00.180 version 3 is the terms are not the terms directly from US law, US copyright egg and so on but 28:00.980 --> 28:07.700 they are defined there are more general terms with exoplanations so that in other countries 28:08.100 --> 28:14.340 if you can understand English of course they are translations and so on but then you can better 28:14.340 --> 28:23.780 understand what is the purpose of a term or what is really the intention of the license 28:23.780 --> 28:31.860 condition to give you an example in GPL version 2 get the term distribution all the license 28:31.940 --> 28:40.180 conditions depend on the distribution but what is distribution? And there is a term distribution 28:40.180 --> 28:47.700 in US copyright law but even the interpretation of that term within the US is not that easy and 28:47.700 --> 28:55.620 for people from outside the US it's even more difficult. And in GPL 3 you have the term 28:55.700 --> 29:02.340 convey and the term convey is defined is providing a copy so that's pretty clear 29:03.460 --> 29:10.820 and you have much more cases that are clearly covered and what is inside and outside of conveying. 29:10.820 --> 29:19.540 So this is definitely progress. We see that also in other licenses so for example Eclipse 29:19.620 --> 29:26.340 public license version 1 has a choice of law clause version 2 does not have such a clause 29:26.340 --> 29:32.820 because nowadays in the Eclipse world you have a lot of European companies involved 29:33.620 --> 29:44.340 and so it's more general and yeah I would say we made a lot of progress. It's also exchanging 29:44.420 --> 29:51.220 ideas what is meant how do you comply with the license condition that helps a lot so that you 29:51.220 --> 29:57.940 have a worldwide stable understanding of what you have to do and what not. 30:01.620 --> 30:07.060 From your experience besides such terms where there is a lot of discussion what exactly does 30:07.060 --> 30:16.500 that mean distribution in a license are there some other examples of issues around free 30:16.500 --> 30:22.420 software licensing that you encounter that people have problems understanding that and regularly 30:22.420 --> 30:26.660 misunderstand that and you have to explain that to every client again and again. 30:26.740 --> 30:39.620 Yeah well there are some technical aspects so for example in the lesser general public license what 30:39.620 --> 30:49.140 does it mean that you are enabled to re-link your software with the LGPR library so if you have 30:49.140 --> 30:56.740 a lawyer who never wrote a program was not heavily involved in software programming it's normal 30:56.740 --> 31:03.620 that they do not know what is linking libraries or the static or dynamic linking and stuff like 31:03.620 --> 31:11.460 that of course you have to explain that to make it provide an understanding of what the license 31:11.460 --> 31:20.020 mean it's a license that's heavily driven by developers for the purpose of developers and so 31:20.020 --> 31:30.500 for loritz it's mostly difficult to understand and we can see that also free software provided 31:31.220 --> 31:40.020 well I wouldn't say problems but required interpretations that were not necessary under proprietary 31:40.100 --> 31:46.900 proprietary software licensing though what is a derivative work that is a general question of 31:46.900 --> 31:55.300 copyright law we know what a derivative work is for photographs music or other works but we don't 31:55.300 --> 32:04.180 know it for software and well if you have no access to the program if you have not the permission to 32:04.260 --> 32:13.540 change it that question does not really matter but free software provides the right to modify and to 32:13.540 --> 32:21.380 create a derivative work so it does matter the copy left does matter and then people ask so what 32:21.380 --> 32:29.540 is a derivative work in that technical situation and but personally I don't know it because it does 32:29.540 --> 32:35.860 not it's not written in the lower there's different interpretation around you have no case law 32:35.860 --> 32:44.500 about this question so it's still an open question of course there is a common understanding for a 32:44.500 --> 32:55.300 lot of technical situations but in general it's extremely difficult to say what is a derivative 32:55.380 --> 33:03.140 work and what's not and that is the reason for that is software is different from other copyrighted 33:03.140 --> 33:12.180 work and when there was a decision to protect computer programs by copyright of course 33:12.820 --> 33:21.380 they was was not consideration of all potential problems or differences from computer problems 33:21.380 --> 33:28.820 compared to other works so a lot of the work of you also seems to involve that you have to 33:29.460 --> 33:36.020 explain technical things to other people with legal background and then a lot of legal 33:36.740 --> 33:43.060 background to the people from the technical background that's true that's a big part of my work 33:43.940 --> 33:52.900 and honestly it's easier to explain law to engineers than why it's worth a technical 33:52.900 --> 34:01.860 stuff to lawyers so I'm I'm doing training trainings for companies but also teaching at the 34:01.860 --> 34:10.340 university and yeah to explain all that technical background of course in in a law course you have 34:10.340 --> 34:16.500 not the time to go really into the details of software programming and for those people who have 34:16.500 --> 34:25.140 no idea about how that works it's difficult it's definitely difficult and there is a big lack of 34:25.140 --> 34:35.140 people with that knowledge technical side and legal side and but it's required so a lot of basic 34:35.220 --> 34:42.580 explanations about how version control systems work for example linking yeah okay it has 34:42.580 --> 34:51.060 everything has a legal impact so for example if if you use Git and you have all the modifications 34:51.060 --> 34:57.940 and who made that commit in the Git history yeah that complies with the requirement of the of the 34:57.940 --> 35:04.900 GPL to provide the the modification information and the date of the modification if you don't know how 35:04.980 --> 35:11.300 that works you would say oh let's write that in and in the in the source header if you ignore the 35:11.300 --> 35:22.260 source header well now you you worked in free software now for over 20 years what do you think the 35:22.260 --> 35:31.700 next 10 years what are the main challenges in the the legal area I think with perspective to free 35:31.700 --> 35:38.820 software would say there are two big challenges the first one is artificial intelligence 35:40.180 --> 35:48.500 though that will have a big impact also on copyright law in general so it started with a 35:48.500 --> 35:57.220 discussion about GitHub co-pilot for example so but the the question behind that is can you see 35:57.220 --> 36:04.500 that from the code whether it's written by a system of artificial intelligence or by 36:04.500 --> 36:12.340 a human being only if it's from a human being it's protected by copyright perhaps copyright will 36:12.340 --> 36:21.300 change you have nowadays your programs that are able to to paint the picture you don't know 36:21.380 --> 36:30.660 that the painter is it from from artificial intelligence so there are a lot of open questions things 36:30.660 --> 36:38.180 new to think to say what is protected what's not protected that will be very interesting I think that 36:38.180 --> 36:48.100 is will give a lot of to discuss and to rethink in the next years and from with regard to 36:49.060 --> 36:56.740 free and open source licensing I would say simplification is important to reduce the work 36:56.740 --> 37:07.220 compliance work on the one hand and on the other hand to facilitate more interoperability to 37:07.220 --> 37:16.660 facilitate more license compatibility because there is actually no reasons for that licenses are 37:17.300 --> 37:23.940 incompatible there is no interest in incompatibility and this is historically grown problem 37:25.060 --> 37:31.860 and we have to provide solutions and simplification of licenses is the main solution for more 37:33.140 --> 37:42.660 license compatibility till we unfortunately have to come to an end but one of the questions I ask 37:42.740 --> 37:51.380 every participant of this podcast is are there any people out there any programs projects that 37:51.380 --> 37:58.420 you would like to thank for their work for free software any programs you like to use any people 37:58.420 --> 38:05.780 whom you admire for their work in free software oh there are a lot a lot of people to be honest 38:05.940 --> 38:14.900 and perhaps to name a few of them representative for many others to be honest is of course Harout 38:15.620 --> 38:21.380 because he explained me a lot of technical stuff that I wouldn't know without him 38:22.180 --> 38:29.380 and as you mentioned technical knowledge for lawyers is very important and you have to people 38:29.460 --> 38:37.700 who have the patients to explain that stuff and are very grateful for that help that he made 38:38.580 --> 38:47.700 and with regard to projects I use a lot of free software and I want to thank the people doing 38:48.340 --> 38:56.820 distributions Linux distributions because that is a lot of work on the one hand and on the other 38:56.820 --> 39:06.100 hand it helps non-developers to use free and source software and I'm very thankful for that work 39:07.140 --> 39:13.620 great thank you very much till for all the other listeners here please also don't wait till 39:13.620 --> 39:18.900 our I love free software day on the 14th of February but also thank other developers out there for 39:18.900 --> 39:26.660 their work and yes still I am really sad that we already have to cut it off here but I'm quite 39:26.660 --> 39:33.060 sure that we will have another episode in in the future again thank you very much for being here 39:33.940 --> 39:39.940 thanks Matthias was a pleasure bye bye so this was the software freedom podcast 39:39.940 --> 39:46.100 if you like this episode please recommend it to your friends or make sure to subscribe to 39:46.100 --> 39:51.380 with your your podcast clients so that you don't miss the next episodes and one of them most 39:51.380 --> 39:57.060 likely than also again with till in a few months this podcast is presented to you by the free 39:57.060 --> 40:04.340 software foundation europe we are a charity promoting software freedom if you like our work please 40:04.340 --> 40:10.340 consider supporting us with a donation we depend on donations from people like you and you can 40:10.340 --> 40:20.340 find more information about that on fsfe.org slash donate thank you very much