Solving a problem of Russian open source projects
Our OpenSource project is over 9 years old. The project is Russian. During its existence, we have encountered and overcome a large number of various difficulties. We found the cause of one of the problems relatively recently.
The project is dedicated to the development of a free business process management system, is based on the jBoss jBPM core and represents the software environment for this core for the end user. During the entire time since the project appeared, some of the potential users of the system got acquainted with the technical solutions applied in the project, but they came to the conclusion that they would not install the system at their enterprise, as the system is Russian. Potential users said that it would be better for them to implement jBoss jBPM in the enterprise itself. To the remarks that our system contains jBoss jBPM within itself and they will not lose anything from the installation of the system, we received no explanation. In the end, it turned out the following:
Potential users believed that the free license LGPL (under which the system is distributed) does not have official legal status in Russia. Therefore, small programmer companies that were looking for free software to install to their customers along with their own components feared that the organization financing the project might in the future claim the rights to the developed code, sue the company using the system and not only oblige it to pay a large amount of fines , but also to lure her end customers who have already implemented a system.
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At the same time, the potential user was not afraid of such behavior by the owner of the jBoss jBPM project because it is a Western company. - Where this company is registered, the LGPL license, under which jBoss jBPM is distributed, has official legal status and therefore the prosecution of a Russian company using the code based on the LGPL license is not possible from the Western company (in the opinion of the potential user).
Solving this problem, we learned that the issue of the legality of free licenses was thoroughly studied by the working group of the Ministry of Communications and Information on open software, with the participation of the legal department. This issue was also worked out in the Ministry of Economy. It was found that there are no legal obstacles to the use of open source software and to the use of free licenses in Russia. All legal issues identified were non-specific for open source software and related to any software.
We found out that in the fourth part of the Civil Code requirements for licensing agreements are spelled out, and for computer programs, the possibility of transferring rights without a contract in writing was specifically left. That is, you can transfer software on the terms of the LGPL as well as on the terms of any other license formulated by the copyright holder.
The problem with a foreign language in which the LGPL license is formulated can be solved by apostilled transfer of the license.
Our partners have informed us that Russia already has experience in supplying products under free licenses under government contracts. We even included the system in one of the distributions, which was officially registered in Informregister.
However, our potential users are not concerned with the theoretical results of research by legal scholars, but with the possible decisions of ordinary Russian courts, tax inspections and similar departments, that is, all these facts are inconclusive for them.
Therefore, we did the following:
This solved the problem.
The project is dedicated to the development of a free business process management system, is based on the jBoss jBPM core and represents the software environment for this core for the end user. During the entire time since the project appeared, some of the potential users of the system got acquainted with the technical solutions applied in the project, but they came to the conclusion that they would not install the system at their enterprise, as the system is Russian. Potential users said that it would be better for them to implement jBoss jBPM in the enterprise itself. To the remarks that our system contains jBoss jBPM within itself and they will not lose anything from the installation of the system, we received no explanation. In the end, it turned out the following:
Potential users believed that the free license LGPL (under which the system is distributed) does not have official legal status in Russia. Therefore, small programmer companies that were looking for free software to install to their customers along with their own components feared that the organization financing the project might in the future claim the rights to the developed code, sue the company using the system and not only oblige it to pay a large amount of fines , but also to lure her end customers who have already implemented a system.
')
At the same time, the potential user was not afraid of such behavior by the owner of the jBoss jBPM project because it is a Western company. - Where this company is registered, the LGPL license, under which jBoss jBPM is distributed, has official legal status and therefore the prosecution of a Russian company using the code based on the LGPL license is not possible from the Western company (in the opinion of the potential user).
Solving this problem, we learned that the issue of the legality of free licenses was thoroughly studied by the working group of the Ministry of Communications and Information on open software, with the participation of the legal department. This issue was also worked out in the Ministry of Economy. It was found that there are no legal obstacles to the use of open source software and to the use of free licenses in Russia. All legal issues identified were non-specific for open source software and related to any software.
We found out that in the fourth part of the Civil Code requirements for licensing agreements are spelled out, and for computer programs, the possibility of transferring rights without a contract in writing was specifically left. That is, you can transfer software on the terms of the LGPL as well as on the terms of any other license formulated by the copyright holder.
The problem with a foreign language in which the LGPL license is formulated can be solved by apostilled transfer of the license.
Our partners have informed us that Russia already has experience in supplying products under free licenses under government contracts. We even included the system in one of the distributions, which was officially registered in Informregister.
However, our potential users are not concerned with the theoretical results of research by legal scholars, but with the possible decisions of ordinary Russian courts, tax inspections and similar departments, that is, all these facts are inconclusive for them.
Therefore, we did the following:
- Took the most famous translation of the LGPL license in Russian
- Pasted this translation with minimal changes directly into our bilateral partnership agreement . - Now the transfer of rights to a partner is governed by a conventional bilateral agreement in Russian, understandable to Russian lawyers, judges, representatives of inspection agencies, etc.
- As an annex to the contract, we give the partner a CD-ROM containing the source code of the system, which is signed by the CEO of the company (directly with a marker for CD-ROMs)
- We are ready to conclude such a partnership agreement (with an explicit transfer of code on a physical medium) with any Russian company using our system.
This solved the problem.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/181896/
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