GPL was found to be inapplicable in French copyright court, however it should be applicable under contract law. The developers lost 9 years and a good chunk of money suing, they even had to pay some legal fees.
Do you understand exactly why the GPL was inapplicable? I was unable to figure it out from the article. My guess is that the defendant may not have actually been copying or distributing the GPL-licensed program. The defendant ran a portal for a client which incorporated the program, but it's not clear that their derived software was being distributed. So, if they did not copy or distribute the program, then their actions would not fall under copyright (or author's rights) infringement. If the copyright action failed, then the plaintiff might try a contract claim, but that doesn't mean that the GPL will necessarily be treated as a contract.
Also, could you cite some authority for the assertion that there is no distinction between licenses and contracts in French law? The concepts are quite different.
The English speaking tech industry often forgets other countries are other countries.
How could they spend 9 years and 14000 Euros on a dispute that should have been settled in 1 day by any French lawyer? ("Licenses don't apply to counterfeit law in France; a license is treated as a contract")
There's a similar issue in US law, you could make a case base on copyright ground or on contract grounds. You should typically sue on both grounds (and anything else you can think of) to leave no escape plan to the offender. I believe that copyright is "stronger" and can award more punitive damages so it's preferred, it's all about money of course.
France have droits d'auteurs (authors rights) and contract law. There's also different ways you could sue for different outcomes, the developers went for counterfeiting hoping to seek the most damages (a very reasonable choice). The judge ruled that you can only go to contract court because GPL is a contract and that's it, he pretty much ditched the case.
edit: There's a French principle stating you can't be pursued for both a contract and a civil violation, the contract takes precedence, in a sense by having GPL the developers ditched their right to hold their authors rights. lol
Of course there's another 10 major details covered by 10 other laws that conflict with one another and could have justified any outcome. It's all fascinating and incredibly messy. If you thought they should have gone to the right court, it's not simple, "right court" wasn't a defined variable (and it is still not because the case is going to appeal to try to redefine what's the right court).
The GPL is not a contract. See, e.g., [0] or [1].
[0] Jones, P. "The GPL Is a License, not a Contract" https://lwn.net/Articles/61292/
[1] Moglen, E. "Enforcing the GNU GPL" https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.en.html
See this article, section "French Law" with some explanations https://thehftguy.com/2020/09/15/french-judge-rules-gpl-lice...
The concept of license exists in France even if the word used is different. In common law countries, we say that a contract must be supported by obligations on at least two parties in order to be enforceable. What we call a license fails that requirement because it is one-sided and merely gives permission to do something, usually with conditions. But the distinction is largely academic and the concepts are similar (e.g., permission to do a thing is functionally the same as a promise not to sue if the person does the thing). From your article, it appears that the word contrat is used in France for for both bilateral contracts and these types of permissive use agreements, e.g. contrat d’utilisation, which seems perfectly reasonable because of how similar the concepts are. So, the concept clearly exists in France even if the word used is different.
Similarly, the rights that common law countries call copyright are encompassed by Author's Rights, specifically the "economic rights". Author's Rights, however, also include "moral rights" that are not a part of copyright. Those rights may also exist in common law countries, but they may fall under some other area of law, such as "Right of Publicity" or "Right of Personality".
In both examples the concepts and rights exist (mostly) in various legal systems, even if the words used are different or if the rights are found in different sections of the law.
Then again a copyright license is a bit of a strange beast. I could rewrite a license as being a simple set of permission, with a list that goes through every combination of behavior for which the license permits. However doing so would be extremely impractical, so we instead have a bunch of permissions with added conditions. This in french law seems to then become a contract which has parties that has rights and obligations.