Re: Dell vs. GPL

[Bernd Petrovitsch <bernd@firmix.at>]

On Sun, 2003-06-29 at 21:50, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> I recall there is a special exception for computer programs in either
> UK or EU law - I forget which, perhaps both.  This exception means

Probably only UK (if any).

> that if I compose some music for a publisher, I cannot give up moral
> rights to the work - which means I always have a right to be credited
> as author or something like that, and nobody can take that away.
> However, if I compose a computer program for a publisher, my moral
> right to be credited _is_ taken away.

At least in Austria (and Germany, which has quite similar law in this
part) this is called "Urheberrecht" (one cannot translate it since it is
fundamentally different from what other call copyright) 
And no, there is no way of getting rid of the "Urheberrecht" -
independent of if you want or not. All you can do is cease the right of
use your works _but not more_.
Ans this applies to allwritten or otherwise created works, be it natural
languages or artificial ones.
Actually that's the most problematic part of "porting the GPL to the
rest of the world".

> This _only_ applies to computer programmers.  Bah!

No, there is no difference - in that field - between computer programs
written in C (or perl or whatever) and poems written in German (or
Esperanto or whatever).

	Bernd