Dear translators,
ABRT dev want to have a different license for translation than the one used for the software.
Their software is GLP 2.0 or after. They would like to have some kind of "Public Domain" License for translation.
I never had this situation before and don't know if this is acceptable or not.
According to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing It means: "Being in the public domain is not a license; rather, it means the material is not copyrighted and no license is needed."
What do you think?
Jean-Baptiste
czw., 9 sty 2020, 10:26 użytkownik Jean-Baptiste Holcroft < jean-baptiste@holcroft.fr> napisał:
Dear translators,
ABRT dev want to have a different license for translation than the one used for the software.
Their software is GLP 2.0 or after. They would like to have some kind of "Public Domain" License for translation.
I never had this situation before and don't know if this is acceptable or not.
According to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing It means: "Being in the public domain is not a license; rather, it means the material is not copyrighted and no license is needed."
What do you think?
It’s absolutely unacceptable. I’m quite baffled, to be honest. What is their reasoning for this?
Best, Piotr
czw., 9 sty 2020, 10:48 użytkownik Piotr Drąg piotrdrag@gmail.com napisał:
czw., 9 sty 2020, 10:26 użytkownik Jean-Baptiste Holcroft < jean-baptiste@holcroft.fr> napisał:
Dear translators,
ABRT dev want to have a different license for translation than the one used for the software.
Their software is GLP 2.0 or after. They would like to have some kind of "Public Domain" License for translation.
I never had this situation before and don't know if this is acceptable or not.
According to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing It means: "Being in the public domain is not a license; rather, it means the material is not copyrighted and no license is needed."
What do you think?
It’s absolutely unacceptable. I’m quite baffled, to be honest. What is their reasoning for this?
Another thing: existing translations are already copyrighted. They’d have to chase hundreds of people who contributed over the years and ask each individually if they’re willing to give up their copyright, or start fresh with new translations. Neither is feasible in my opinion.
IANAL, of course.
On Thu, Jan 09, 2020 at 10:48:48AM +0100, Piotr Drąg wrote:
czw., 9 sty 2020, 10:26 użytkownik Jean-Baptiste Holcroft < jean-baptiste@holcroft.fr> napisał:
Dear translators,
ABRT dev want to have a different license for translation than the one used for the software.
Their software is GLP 2.0 or after. They would like to have some kind of "Public Domain" License for translation.
I never had this situation before and don't know if this is acceptable or not.
According to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing It means: "Being in the public domain is not a license; rather, it means the material is not copyrighted and no license is needed."
What do you think?
It’s absolutely unacceptable. I’m quite baffled, to be honest. What is their reasoning for this?
Why should it be unacceptable ?
I get some people find it distasteful to not have a formal license text for "Public Domain", but none the less "Public Domain" is an accepted licensing approach for software in most distros including Fedora.
The very permissive licenses such as BSD are effectively giving users the same usage rights as "public domain", but with a formal license text behind them. So if people are uncomfortable with "public domain" translations, then just using 2-clause BSD would achieve the same end result for ABRT in practice IMHO.
Regards, Daniel
Le 2020-01-09 10:56, Daniel P. Berrangé a écrit :
On Thu, Jan 09, 2020 at 10:48:48AM +0100, Piotr Drąg wrote:
It’s absolutely unacceptable. I’m quite baffled, to be honest. What is their reasoning for this?
Why should it be unacceptable ?
I feel like this is like saying: translation work is not part of our project and we don't value it as much as we value what dev do.
In addition, Fedora FPCA says if you don't know what license your are contributing to, you should expect your work as CC SA 3.0.
This is a protection for Fedora contributors: attribution and share alike. Here, with a Public Domain, you have none of it, so a contributor could feel like betrayed not having a warning.
I'm in favor of including translators in application credits, the way GNOME does it.
Jean-Baptiste
On Thu, Jan 09, 2020 at 11:40:41AM +0100, Jean-Baptiste Holcroft wrote:
Le 2020-01-09 10:56, Daniel P. Berrangé a écrit :
On Thu, Jan 09, 2020 at 10:48:48AM +0100, Piotr Drąg wrote:
It’s absolutely unacceptable. I’m quite baffled, to be honest. What is their reasoning for this?
Why should it be unacceptable ?
I feel like this is like saying: translation work is not part of our project and we don't value it as much as we value what dev do.
Yes, I don't disagree in that assessment. It is not a very positive view to take of translators work :-(
In addition, Fedora FPCA says if you don't know what license your are contributing to, you should expect your work as CC SA 3.0.
If something is explicitly stated as being "public domain" then the license is known, so the default CC SA 3.0 choice doesn't apply.
This is a protection for Fedora contributors: attribution and share alike. Here, with a Public Domain, you have none of it, so a contributor could feel like betrayed not having a warning.
If 'share alike' is something Translation team considers a requirement, that rules out most permissive licenses. That's a valid position to take, but it does limit what software Fedora translation team will work with quite a lot.
I'm in favor of including translators in application credits, the way GNOME does it.
Likewise, I do personally think it is good to give attribution / credit to everyone involved in contributing to the project.
My key thought/point is that the real question is broader than just "is public domain acceptable". It is about stating what subset of OSS licenses in general are acceptable for translation work, because the distinction between "Public domain" and other very permissive licenses is quite minor in practice.
Regards, Daniel
Le 2020-01-09 11:56, Daniel P. Berrangé a écrit :
If 'share alike' is something Translation team considers a requirement, that rules out most permissive licenses. That's a valid position to take, but it does limit what software Fedora translation team will work with quite a lot.
This isn't a translation team requirement, just the global mindset when you join and contribute in the Fedora community. If you know explicitly you are contributing under another mindset/rule, everything is fine.
My key thought/point is that the real question is broader than just "is public domain acceptable". It is about stating what subset of OSS licenses in general are acceptable for translation work, because the distinction between "Public domain" and other very permissive licenses is quite minor in practice.
Yes, the question is broader: is licensing translation under another license than the software itself acceptable?
Jean-Baptiste
On Thu, Jan 09, 2020 at 10:26:02AM +0100, Jean-Baptiste Holcroft wrote:
ABRT dev want to have a different license for translation than the one used for the software.
Their software is GLP 2.0 or after. They would like to have some kind of "Public Domain" License for translation.
Translation is a derivated work. I.e. if a message in the original language has some license, then the same license conditions apply to the translated message.
In this case ABRT would have to stipulate that all the message strings in the sources are Public Domain while the other pieces of the code is GPL 2.0 or later.
I find it very inconvenient. Not mentioning that ABRT maintainers would have to get a permissions for all authors to change the license of the current messages and translations from GPL 2.0 or later to Public Domain. (Or rewrite them from the scratch so that they consistute an indepdent work. And that I personally find infeasible.)
I never had this situation before and don't know if this is acceptable or not.
According to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing It means: "Being in the public domain is not a license; rather, it means the material is not copyrighted and no license is needed."
Yes. Public Domain does grant any permissions and hence the default rights granted by local law apply. Since in some countries default rights do not comprise the rights to use, modify, distribute etc. as required by Fedora definition of free software, Public Domain is discouraged because Fedora could not distribute such work globally.
I rather recommned you and ABRT team to ask at Fedora legal list where you should get an authoritative answer.
-- Petr
Well, wait a minute, at least have the decency to CC me here.
Yes, get Legal involved and stop throwing around legal opinions, because they simply don’t matter. How are the translations licensed already? Does it even have anything to do with the code license? Why ask the developers? I expect actual planning to happen before I get random questions thrown at my face.
Well, it sounds like you are angry about this. I faced a situation I don't know what to do with, I asked the community and informed you in the issue the discussion doesn't look so easy and ask you what to do [1].
How would you like to work on this subject?
[1] https://github.com/abrt/retrace-server/issues/283#issuecomment-572503921
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Daniel P. Berrangé -
Ernestas Kulik -
Jean-Baptiste Holcroft -
Petr Pisar -
Piotr Drąg