[ Thanks to Jeff
Smelser for this link. ]
“German has opened the doors wide open to open source software,
with the federal government leading the charge. But users here
could face some serious legal issues, according to Gerald Spindler,
a professor of law at the Georg-August University in
Göttingen.“Spindler was asked by the German software association Verband
der Softwareindustrie Deutschland e.V. (VSI) to examine the legal
implications of open source software. His 123-page, highly-detailed
study comes to several conclusions that could make many existing
and potential users of open source software think twice about
running the increasingly popular ‘free software on their computers.
Among them: The General Public License has no legal validity in
Germany.“It’s worth noting that VSI is a lobby group for closed source
software vendors and that any report from this camp is likely to be
critical of open source…”