On Tue, 2008-09-23 at 07:13 +0100, Peter TB Brett wrote: > On Tuesday 23 September 2008 06:20:18 Bert Timmerman wrote: > > > I thought to update the Dutch translation in Launchpad this morning and > > was asked to agree with a transition of my Dutch translations to a BSD > > license, or to disagree, and have my translations removed from > > Launchpad. > > > > As I understand gEDA currently uses the GPL v2 license. > > > > Could you give me advice how to proceed with this license issue on > > Launchpad, as I would like to have (my) translations to be in sync with > > gEDA source code (and not to be distributed in a separate tarball). > > IANAL, but as far as I remember BSD code is GPL-compatible: it can be > included > and distributed in GPL software without any problems. > > Anyone else able to weigh in on this?
I forgot launchpad made this change. They changed to requesting people use a BSD license so they can pool a large database of string translations (which launchpad users are providing), and allow them to be used to translate software under a wide varity of licenses. https://help.launchpad.net/Translations/LicensingFAQ I don't know what implications this carries for specifying what licenses gEDA is under when it installs. Would we have to document somewhere that (some?) of the translations are under a BSD license, or can we just extract the .po files and be done with it? This could all become tricky if we aren't careful, and really adds complexity to my TODO item to merge and make sure translations from CVS are up to date in launchpad. Seems like external uploads from our published gEDA sources will retain the license gEDA has explicitly on its translations. "# This file is distributed under the same license as the gEDA/gaf package." Well.. those are GPL V2+ then, even in Launchpad. Then, we get some new contributors, or existing contributors editing the translations in Launchpad. This makes those edited strings under the BSD license (no documentation clause), according to a translator's agreement with Launchpad. I don't see how we can merge those translations back into our git repository and still keep track of the licensing for each translation. Similarly, we can't - without asking all the translation contributors, just say "lets make all gEDA translations BSD licensed". If I were to perform such a merge, and managed (somehow) to log which strings were under which license, then upon re-upload to launchpad, I'd be uploading a pack of translations claiming them to be under GPL, when some are now sourced from launchpad under the BSD license. IMO, Canonical have screwed this up, and should have gone down the "public domain" route with their translations. Even then, it isn't clear if we could take public domain translations (no restrictions on use), then declare them part of a GPL set. (Slightly mean spirited, even if it were possible). I would think launchpad should request authors submit their transations allowing Canonical / Launchpad / whoever, to re-license them under ANY OSI approved license. (Or with the BSD theme... any license?) There would perhaps still be the nightmare of trying to keep track of copyright holders for individual strings. But.. perhaps we don't care - so long as the license is right. Launchpad keeps track internally of who submitted which translations, and what license they agreed to. The underlying problem seems to be that Canonical assume once you (as a project) start to use Launchpad for translations, it is your primary source of translations. They are not setup very well to handle merging back to upstream if changes may have been made there as well - basically requiring that I export the launchpad translations, merge changes which have been made in GIT, then re-upload all the translations - wiping out the origin / licensing information of the strings in that project. Perhaps I should take this discussion onto the launchpad-users list too? Regards, -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) _______________________________________________ geda-dev mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-dev
