Re: unifying copyright entries

[Nilgün Belma Bugüner <nilgun superonline com>]

Pazartesi 2 Aralık 2002 00:44 sularında, Sander Vesik şunları yazmıştı: 
> On Sun, 1 Dec 2002, [iso-8859-9] Nilg=FCn Belma Bug=FCner wrote:
> >=20
> > or you can write:
> >=20
> > # SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
> > # Copyright (C) YEAR  FIRST_AUTHOR.
> > # Permission is granted to freely copy and distribute
> > # this file and modified versions, provided that this
> > # header is not removed and modified versions are marked
> > # as such.
> > # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.
> > #
> >=20
>
> erm... why then not just import the 2-clause bsd licence? it achieves what
> you seem to be trying to do (peopel can freely copy, distribute, modify
> and include as part of a whole but need to keep headers) while at the same
> time including the 'exclusion of warranty' so you are covered there
> aswell?
>

In PO files, copyright has at least two holders.
1. Author of the software package.
2. Translator.
Sometimes there is a third party involved. (like FSF)

All of these parties could make a claim on the text. What does FSF do? 
It obtains a disclaimer, thus solving the problem -- I have such a 
disclaimer filed with the FSF.

What do the GNOME folk do? They try to find ways of going around the 
problem...

To give an example:

> Copyright (C) YEAR  MAINTAINER.
> FIRST AUTHOR , YEAR.

In this header:

>
> "This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package."

Neither I, as the translator, nor the package maintainer can reasonably 
put the sentence above in the file, since it would mean usurping the 
copyright on the portions of the file that the other party has claim to.

This header simply assigns the copyright to the package maintainer. I do 
not believe such a simple copyright assignment is valid -- this is the 
reason why FSF obtains a disclaimer from every translator, with a real 
signature. If the translator were to later change his/her mind, I am 
fairly sure the above header would not be of any use.

Besides, as a non-English user (not as translator), I wouldn't want this 
file to be copyrighted by a single person without any explanation or 
disclaimer, since in that case, the file can no longer be legally 
modified and distributed by someone else. That is, if the copyright 
holder stops maintaining the translation, no one else can step in. This 
would mean that I would be unable to use the program in my own language. 
With the FSF, this problem does not exist, we already know their methods.

My suggestion solves this problem.

What is left, is whether or not the package maintainer will include a 
file with such a header to his/her package... That decision is theirs to 
make, and they may not. Their loss...

As far as warranty, non-copyleft licenses do not give any rights to the 
user anyway. How would you have any warranties for a text for which 
permission to *freely* modify, distribute and copy is given? It is 
illogical... Who would be able to prove that the text was not changed, 
so that the warranties you speak of would hold? And besides, who has 
written my name in that file?.:-) Perhaps adding a "No Warranty" 
sentence might be reasonable.

You might have other concerns. By thinking aloud, we may be able to make 
this header work for everyone. A little longer text would not hurt 
anybody. Let's not forget that the entire Y2K problem stemmed out of a 
desire to shorten by two characters.

The important thing here is to make sure copyleft really is copyleft.

But it does not seem appropriate to me to write "It is under XYZ 
license". If I were a package maintainer, I would not accept such a 
file. What is going to be distributed -- package of software, or package 
of licenses??

Nilgün