Re: Copyright assignment

[danilo gnome org (Danilo Šegan)]

Hi Rob, foundation-list,

This is a reply to a message from d-d-l.

Today at 18:36, Rob Adams wrote:

> I'm not even entirely convinced mere translations are even
> copyrightable.  Am I mistaken?

Yes, AFAIK you're mistaken.  Translation is a "derivative work", and
is thus copyrighted by both the original author, and the translator
(at least according to Serbian copyright law; U.S. law might be
different, but I suspect not too much).

> If they are, and they're GPL licensed and Novell doesn't own the
> copyright, Novell would not be able to distribute them as part of a non-
> GPL product, whether they are linked, loaded, or finely minced and fried
> in butter.  The key here is the redistribution -- Novell could for
> example include a utility to allow users to download GPL-licensed
> translation files separately from their distribution.

Exactly, and with current Gnome/Evolution setup, it would be very
difficult to do so for binary distributions (merging translations into
existing .desktop, .schemas, ... files).

Cheers,
Danilo