| The GPL itself relies very much on Berne. Without Berne, either anything would
be freely copyable for any purpose imaginable (like BSD only even more so, so
the Monopoly could take everyone's code, the product of their hard work, and
embody it into anything), or nothing at all would be copyable. With a license
that stands on the foundation set by Berne, legitimate copying can be explicitly
allowed, while what the author of the licence deems to be illegitimate copying
can be legally prevented, by civil and/or criminal law. Propagating GPL software
for general use and further development (use, modify, distribute etc) is
considered to be legitimate, while making it into a closed product and
distributing that, so hindering the rights which have been intentionally given
to others to use, modify and distribute, is considered to be illegitimate.
Enforcement action is taken under the local implementation of Berne, when
necessary, and so far with complete success. In countries which are not
signatories to the several "Berne" conventions or have not developed their own
copyright law (there are more
than a few), there is nothing to prevent either GPL violation, or the local
authorities, at random, from imprisoning you for copying GPL code, because there
is no law to limit copying, nor allow it. If you are a GPL (or other)
developer it really is best to live and work in a country which is a signatory
to Berne. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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