<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hello ! <div><br></div><div><br></div><div>As you all are developers, you may want some informations about the french "droit d'auteur".</div><div><br></div><div>The most important point is : VideoLAN is a french organization, so all the softwares it distributes are under the french law.</div><div><br></div><div>In France, neither the copyright nor the patents are applyable to the softwares. They are only ruled by the "droit d'auteur", which is pretty close to the royalty…</div><div><br></div><div>All developers (from France or somewhere else) of a software are authors of their pieces of code. Even if it is easier (and more convenient to the users) to write <i>© VideoLAN</i>, juridically each developer is an author, who can be identified in the source code.</div><div>Moreover, the french law doesn't impose any formalism to the authors (except the creation itself) : each piece of code is automatically protected as a creation and owned by its author.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>If you need more information, just ask me.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>(please excuse my english, I went to french schools)</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Thomas</div></body></html>