On 03/08/2014 09:48 PM, Georg Pfeiffer wrote:
Dear Sirs,
the german trennmuster project [1] provides a LaTeX package
de-hyph-exptl wich is part of the debian texlive-lang-german
package. The core component is a long list of german words as source for
the generation of hyphenation patterns wich is actually not a part of
debian.
We intend to give the whole project a default license wich is a german
translation of the MIT license [2]. The english text is included. Our
intention is, that the german text shall be more clear and more
convenient to german project members (authors) as well as for german
customers wich we estimate to be the majority as well on the author as
on the customer side.
Are there any concerns about the assignment of a german language license
to an almost german project? The sub parts of our project integrated
into debian packages will stay further under the common english licenses
of course.
The only problem I see is, which license takes legal force? Will the
project be licensed under the MIT (English) License, with the German
version provided merely for convenience, or vice versa; or even dual
licensed under both. Consider: what if there is a mistranslation, or
other error in only one version of the license. Which would take precedence?
I suggest licensing under the MIT license, as is (in English), and
specifying (either in German or English (or both?)) that the German
translation is merely for reference/convenience sake. I suggest using
the English version as the "official" version not to discriminate
against German users, but to avoid license proliferation, and to expose
any potential legal issues in the license to a wider audience. (And, of
course, the community has already established that there are no problems
with MIT as is.)
All that said, IANAL, and I do not represent the position of Debian or
anyone else.
If you deny a comment because it affects non debian topics only, please
give us a hint to a relevant site or discussion.
Georg
[1] http://projekte.dante.de/Trennmuster/WebHome
[2] http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
Regards,
Jon
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