Hugh McMaster <[email protected]> writes: > Many of the files contain the following format: > > # SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE. > # Copyright (C) YEAR THE PACKAGE'S COPYRIGHT HOLDER > # This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package. > # > # Translators: > # Name 1 <email>, Year > # Name 2 <email>, Year 1 - Year 2 > > Do names listed under the "Translators" heading count as copyright > holders?
Whether a person's creative work is restricted by copyright law, is a matter less for Debian project members and more for experts in copyright law. So your question could be intepreted in multiple ways: Are you asking, Does copyright law in some specific jurisdiction restrict the actions of the recipient conditional on license from the translators who contributed to that work? (That's what I understand by “do these people count as copyright holders”. It's a vexed question in many cases.) Are you asking, Must the Debian package list the translators separately in its ‘debian/copyright’ document? That question depends in part on the vexed legal question, above; it also depends in part on what level of documentation the FTP masters will accept for a package. > Do I need to record these names, or is there a generic attribution > that I can use? As a practical matter, I find it sufficient to list “© 1984–1997 Foo Bar and others” (where “Foo Bar” is whatever primary party is recorded in the upstream source work) — *if* there is no special effort in the source work to document copyright more explicitly for translators. In the case (which I have not encountered) where the upstream work does specially record the copyright held by translators, I would use that information for the ‘debian/copyright’ document. -- \ “Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a | `\ dotted line. He caught every other fish.” —Steven Wright | _o__) | Ben Finney
