Note that the last HN discussion never really happened, it gathered both too many votes and flags in 20 minutes and got automatically hidden, only to be unblocked by a mod later. It would be great if you could refrain from flagging this time, even if the ruling comes as a culture shock to you.
I assure you it is not clickbait. The authors of GPL software are really spending years and a fortune in court only to have all their copyright claims dismissed. The ruling passed the High Court (TGI), the Appeal Court and the CJUE.
Well, if you really want an anecdote with the FSF. I happen to have one :D
The court used the French GPL translation from the FSF. The very translations saying that they are not official translations and cannot be used in court. Well, the FSF doesn't get to decide what's admissible in court.
That's not that unusual. If you have a contract written in something other than English and it ended up in a US court, the court would probably look at this translation and essentially be like, well, even though it says that it was translated by a non-party to this case and there's no reason to believe it's intentionally mistranslated, so good enough. Especially if the parties to the dispute didn't have any objections.
The page is very clear that it only considers the English document to constitute the real contract, and all translations as helpers, not as legal documents:
> The FSF does not approve license translations as officially valid. The reason is that checking them would be difficult and expensive (needing the help of bilingual lawyers in other countries). Even worse, if an error did slip through, the results could be disastrous for the whole free software community. As long as the translations are unofficial, they can't do any legal harm.
> ...
> We give permission to publish translations of GNU licenses into other languages, provided that:
> You label your translation as unofficial to inform people that they do not count legally as substitutes for the authentic version (see below for how to do this).
do not count legally as substitutes for the authentic version isn't the exact same wording, but I don't think it's a leap to go from "this is not a legal document" to "this is not to be used in court" when referring specifically to contracts and licenses.
It's at least no more of a leap than telling someone they're lying when they're paraphrasing, and in a way many people think is fairly accurate.
You're being oddly pedantic. The translations aren't authorized by the FSF to be used as the translation of their licenses i.e. they entirely reserve the right to dispute the text of any of them.
You can use an empty soda can in court. The FSF probably hopes that they are used in court as a starting point.
There was a brief HN discussion on the initial ruling 2 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24478769 the case just went to appeal earlier this year.
Note that the last HN discussion never really happened, it gathered both too many votes and flags in 20 minutes and got automatically hidden, only to be unblocked by a mod later. It would be great if you could refrain from flagging this time, even if the ruling comes as a culture shock to you.
I assure you it is not clickbait. The authors of GPL software are really spending years and a fortune in court only to have all their copyright claims dismissed. The ruling passed the High Court (TGI), the Appeal Court and the CJUE.