Re: Documentation license change and translations [was: Re: GNOME Sudoku Manual Copyright]

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

Thanks Andre. This is helpful. One comment:

On Thu, 2011-12-01 at 17:58 +0100, Andre Klapper wrote:
> 4) Check existing translations of the old documentation.
> I didn't see a problem for existing doc translations (.po
> files with extracted messages) that included the line "This file is
> distributed under the same license as the evolution package." at the
> beginning.

That wording is, in my IANAL opinion, really shaky to begin with.
The evolution "package" isn't distributed under any license. It's
a collection of copyrightable things, each of which is under some
license. The majority of the copyrightable stuff in the package
evolution-x.x.x.tar.gz is probably GPL.

I also think James has a really good point here:

> With regard to the last step I am quoting James again:
> "It is somewhat questionable whether this is sufficient to give you
> rights to their work on any license Novell sees fit to apply to the
> Evolution package at any date in the future (including, for example, a
> proprietary one). Contributors have expectations that the licenses will
> be honored and not switched without their permission.  Unless you were
> extremely clear to your translation team that the clause you cite means
> what you claim, you should strongly consider getting the translators'
> permissions."

But I guess it's only a real problem if somebody actually cares.
For example, we've been skirting a few of the FDL's more annoying
clauses for a long time. Nobody has complained yet. I suspect most
contributors would be OK with "distribute under any free content
license approved by the GNOME Foundation".

Not that I'm advocating ignoring copyrights or licenses. We have
to deal with these things, and I'm glad people are taking them
seriously and having this conversation. I'm just saying there's
some murky points if you look deep enough, and it's probably
not worth us all getting law degrees to figure them all out.

--
Shaun