FR: 'Changes to GPL beneficial for government's use of Open Source'
The new version of the GNU General Public Licence (GPLv3) has increased the usefulness of the licence to the French government, says Thierry Aimé, an IT architect at the French ministry of Finance.
The improvements in internationalisation and compatibility with the Apache software licence make the GPLv3 more useful for the Ministry, which uses a lot of Open Source. Clauses in the GPLv3 dealing with patents and digital rights management are of no concern, Aimé explained in a presentation at a meeting of European Open Source Lawyers held in Paris on 24 September.
The ministry can accept propositions from companies that propose to use software published with the GPLv3. "The licence applicable to the software is not part of the contract with the public administration." Neither is it a problem that the GPL is written in English, he added.
When developing applications that need to be shared with others, the ministry will check the licences of the software it uses for four requirements. "The licence must allow unrestricted use, the right to study the code, correct and improve the application and the right to redistribute."
Taboo
The French government has no Open Source policy, but there is a strategic need to gain control over the IT systems and become independent. "Open Source is not taboo. If there is a need for it, the government will use it. The licence will be a decisive factor when deciding what software to use."
The European Open Source Layers conference was organised to analyse features of the GPLv3 like digital rights management, patents and compatability. "We also wanted to present the points of view of stakeholders from different industrial sectors", the organisers explain on the website.
The third revision of the GPL was published in June 2007. Its drafts drew a lot of criticism for being too restrictive. According to Palamida, an organisation monitoring the adoption of the GPLv3, so far 3345 Open Source projects selected this licence.
The licence is not yet included in the list of software licences that are compatible with the European Union Public Licence (EUPL).
More information:
European Open Source Lawyers event website
Palamida
Document Actions
