Request for approval: EUPL (European Union Public Licence)

[Romain Berrendonner]

Ben Tilly wrote:
> The possible question marks are OSD #5, #6 and #10.  In the first two
> cases it is possible that a language specific version discriminates
> *for* some use or group so strongly that it could be interpreted as
> descrimination *against* everyone else.

As far as discrimination is concerned, don't forget that this licence is 
issued by the European Commission, and that the European treaties have 
very strong provisions against discrimination (see for instance art. 12, 
13, 30 ... of the Treaty on European Community). The EC could just not 
endorse a licence that would establish discrimination, and would it do 
so, there would be possible actions against that in the European Court 
of Justice or in national jurisdictions.

> This all, of course, depends on the *recipient* being able to choose
> the license language.  If it is the *distributer* that makes the
> choice, then all bets are off and I'd be against accepting any of
> these licenses on principle.

The point is that all the translations are binding. Basically, the 
recipient can come to court with the Hungarian translation, the 
distributer come to court with the Swedish translation, the court will 
try to find a common interpretation based on those two translations. 
This is standard practice in European Community jurisdiction and 
European law has been working on those grounds for several decades.

In addition to this, remember that the parties could chose English as 
the procedural language in the Court, and the judges work in French, 
because it is the working language of the ECJ, and you got the full picture.

-- 
Romain Berrendonner                           berrendonner at adacore.com
+33 (0)1 49 70 67 16                            http://www.adacore.com
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