Re: Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo (yo, ha, ig) po files

[Luis Villa <luis tieguy org>]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 8:25 AM, Dave Neary <dneary gnome org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Andre Klapper wrote:
>> This is about http://www.gnome.org/~tthurman/yo-ha-ig/ .
>> These are .po files extracted from a Nigerian distro called "Wazobia
>> Linux".
>> Several KDE and GNOME applications were translated into the three
>> languages in the subject line, a user has found a disk image, extracted
>> the .mo files, decompiled them to .po and sent them to Thomas Thurman.
> ...
>> So to me it boils down to the question: "Can we just take the .po files
>> without asking anybody?" and (like Johannes wrote earlier) "if a
>> translation can be considered a derived work."
>
> I think Johannes has almost asked the right question.
>
> The question is whether translating an application results in a derived
> work. Am I missing something, or isn't the answer obviously yes?
>
> *If* the translated application is derived from the original, then if
> the original application is GPL, you can just take the .po file, and
> credit the person/people who did the translation. If the app is LGPL,
> the same thing applies. For any BSD-type licence, you'll need
> confirmation from Wazobia that their translations were released under
> the same licence.

I *think* (though I will check with SFLC shortly to make sure) that
this is not the case. Just because it *should* have been released
under GPL doesn't mean it *is* released under GPL, or that we can
treat it that way. It is still under 'their' copyright until either
they or a court agree that it should be GPL as a remedy for the
violation.

> This seems like the kind of thing that the FSF and the SFLC have
> probably thought about already.

Possibly, though I've never heard of a case of abandonware translations before.

Luis