Re: [sqlite] Re: philosophy behind public domain?

Hi,

Stefan Finzel wrote:
> 
> As a german citizen I'll try you explain my understanding of my 
> countries law. The basic concept should be similar within central Europe 
> (Austria, France, Italy, Spain ... but not Great Britain) as most 
> countries laws evolved from the Roman law .
hmm... but in the case of copyright, Germany is a signatory of the Berne 
convention (right?), and so shouldnt the basic aspects of copyright remain the same?

> First one just handles the mental ownership of  a piece of work. This 
> can not be  given to another party.  In many cases this is worth nothing 
> as is just bundles your name with your work.
This does differ from copyright somewhat, but apparently it is also covered in 
the Berne convention.
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/moral%20rights

> Second one handles the commercial and economical aspects. Of cause this 
> is something total different. If you get paid for your work,  you 
> sometimes loose this rights  to your  customer or employer immediatly.
> If you still have this rights by your own  you are able to  
> give/license/sell them like  every material thing.
Would this not correspond to copyright?
The right to sell is (usually) covered by copyright.

> As I unterstand  the american way the customer or employer get the 
> unrestricted usage rights under almost all circumstances. Additionally 
> the author seems to have no right to be mentioned at all.
I'm not from the U.S., so my understanding may be skewed, but it seems that it 
depends on the license and/or contract.

> Do not worry in casse an author tells you he gives you the right to use, 
> to decide how to use AND(!!!) the right to modify it.
The thing is, the right to use is covered by patent law (which doesnt yet and 
hopefully never applies to software in Europe, methinks), while the right to 
modify is covered by copyright law. Both are not moral rights, from what I see.

> Once again note, in Germany the right to modify code does not include 
> removing the authors name.
That's because the right of attribution is a moral right.

> Now most germans seems to accept the common GPL and BSD like copyrights. 
> But I have problems understanding  many  restrictions/variatons of 
> proprietary copyrights and just do not accept and use them.
> In cases german citizens accepted a foreign license model ot contribute 
> software, it would be nearly impossible to involve a German court 
> whether for license nor for warranty aspects.
Yeah, there was a discussion on the differences in law in some European 
countries and the U.S. and similiar systems at the Open Source Initiative 
license discuss mailing list, but I wasnt paying attention :|

Eugene Wee

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice/opinion.