BSD licence

[Matthias Urlichs]

Hi,

luca (ᴉ) innurindi:
> I think they negatively affect also the Ubuntu translations made in
> Launchpad, because who spends some time and energy for providing a
> quality translation if someone can later distribute this one in a
> closed way and under his own license?

Ummm, in theory, yes, but ...

> The BSD licence can encourage the behaviour of profiting from the
> others' work without costs.

... we're talking about translations of some specific, open-source-
licensed software here. Presumably the translations are of no use if you
don't already have the software. And the translations, once shipped with
said software, will inherit its license (being derived works).


LP suggests translations from other source packages than the one you're
working on, and which may be under a different (and possibly incompatible)
license. This might be a legal problem.

You can either stop suggesting treanslations, which causes
(a) inconsistencies and (b) duplicate work ...

... or you place the aggregate body of translations in Launchpad under
the most liberal license possible, and hope that nobody who translated
software A complains when his translation of string B ends up in
incompatibly-licensed package C, after translator D copied a suggestion
across.

Until somebody has a better idea, I'd suggest the latter solution.

-- 
Matthias Urlichs   |   {M:U} IT Design @ m-u-it.de   |  smurf at smurf.noris.de
Disclaimer: The quote was selected randomly. Really. | http://smurf.noris.de
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If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.