Re: Translation licences

[Josef Spillner <josef ggzgamingzone org>]

Am Mittwoch, 11. April 2007 18:31 schrieben Sie:
> gnome-games is licensed with the GPL version 2, and the translations are
> licensed with the same license. The GPL and LGPL licenses are compatible,
> so you can use either license if you want to:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

I'm not sure about this. If a translator explicitly wishes his works to be 
under GPL, then it shouldn't be possible to re-use the translations in LGPL 
packages, which would allow the translation to be used in proprietary 
software which build upon ggz-client-libs or any other LGPL'd library for 
that matter.

By importing ggz-client-libs into GNOME SVN, the LGPL was "upgraded" to GPL, 
but it cannot be downgraded again for any modifications.
Unless we can assume that all translators are happy with LGPL (which they 
probably are since they don't care about licences, but it couldn't hurt 
asking them).

This is not so much about GGZ, there could be more such situations arising in 
the future. A solution I see would be to add LGPL through COPYING.LIB to 
gnome-games, and specify that the imported libraries which already were LGPL 
keep this licence. All GGZ library-related translations would then be LGPL as 
well, and all modifications to GGZ libraries can be merged back into our 
codebase without having to ask whether LGPL is ok, too.

(Right now the only change is to gtk-client which is already GPL, but the libs 
are LGPL.)

Josef

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