david neary said for the francophones among you this article is a summary of the reasons why most free software licences and the gpl in particular are not valid in france URL google translation hard to read most of the time but good enough to pick up the gist URL in brief in an international contract when mentioning copyright you must mention under which jurisdiction s laws the copyright is applied french law requires the licence to be available in french the gpl isn t and french law requires that for a contract to be valid it must not breach existing law also under french law the copyright holder automatically retains the right to change the licence which means that french law is in conflict with the gpl which requires authorisation from all authors before a licence change is allowed also there s some stuff about french consumer law forbidding sale without guarantee of anything so software delivered as is breaches consumer law in france but i didn t really follow that my french is a bit iffy these days but if this is true does it not also nullify microsoft adobe and winzip licences amongst most others these all claim no liability no guarantees m say delivered with all faults so at least they are honest ciaran irish linux users group ilug URL URL for un subscription information list maintainer listmaster URL 