1:29 p.m.
Hi,
I’m currently butting heads with the l10n team about licensing the translations consumed
in an upstream project. What needs to be clarified here is the relationship between the
upstream code license, Fedora CLA and translator-submitted content.
https://docs.weblate.org/en/weblate-3.10/admin/licensing.html tells me that Weblate is
able to handle CLAs, so, in the event that the translator-submitted content is bound by
the Fedora CLA, should all projects in the Weblate instance that currently use a “user
license” (i.e. software license) be changed accordingly?
Are translations in any way a derivative work? I would say translators work in a
clean-room environment with only the source string and, optionally, context being
provided. Does that matter at all here?
1:46 p.m.
New subject: Licensing translations provided via Zanata (and now Weblate)
In the US, translations are an original copyrighted work, not a derivative
copyrighted work.
That said, the Fedora FPCA is different from most CLAs, in that its sole
purpose is to ensure that Fedora has permission to use contributions
without an explicit license under a Free license (MIT for code, CC-BY-SA
for content). If a contribution is made with a different Free license (e.g.
same as the upstream), Fedora uses that licensing.
So, lets step through the process:
= No explicit license =
1. A Fedora contributor makes translation changes and contributes their
changes to Fedora, without indicating a license.
2. The Fedora FPCA says that Fedora (and anyone who receives that
contribution from Fedora) can use that change under CC-BY-SA (I'm guessing
that translations count as content).
3. The upstream can take the changes from Fedora under CC-BY-SA.
OR
= Explicit license =
1. A Fedora contributor makes translation changes and contributes their
changes to Fedora under a specific license (e.g. BSD, because that is what
upstream uses).
2. Fedora takes those contributions under the BSD license. (The FPCA
permits this, as long as the license is acceptable for Fedora, aka, a Free
license.)
3. The upstream can take the changes from Fedora under BSD.
Does that help?
Tom
On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 2:29 PM Ernestas Kulik <ekulik(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Hi,
I’m currently butting heads with the l10n team about licensing the
translations consumed in an upstream project. What needs to be clarified
here is the relationship between the upstream code license, Fedora CLA and
translator-submitted content.
https://docs.weblate.org/en/weblate-3.10/admin/licensing.html tells me
that Weblate is able to handle CLAs, so, in the event that the
translator-submitted content is bound by the Fedora CLA, should all
projects in the Weblate instance that currently use a “user license” (i.e.
software license) be changed accordingly?
Are translations in any way a derivative work? I would say translators
work in a clean-room environment with only the source string and,
optionally, context being provided. Does that matter at all here?
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1:13 a.m.
New subject: Licensing translations provided via Zanata (and now Weblate)
On Thu, 2020-01-09 at 14:46 -0500, Tom Callaway wrote:
In the US, translations are an original copyrighted work, not a
derivative
copyrighted work.
That said, the Fedora FPCA is different from most CLAs, in that its
sole
purpose is to ensure that Fedora has permission to use contributions
without an explicit license under a Free license (MIT for code, CC-
BY-SA
for content). If a contribution is made with a different Free license
(e.g.
same as the upstream), Fedora uses that licensing.
So, lets step through the process:
= No explicit license =
1. A Fedora contributor makes translation changes and contributes
their
changes to Fedora, without indicating a license.
2. The Fedora FPCA says that Fedora (and anyone who receives that
contribution from Fedora) can use that change under CC-BY-SA (I'm
guessing
that translations count as content).
3. The upstream can take the changes from Fedora under CC-BY-SA.
OR
= Explicit license =
1. A Fedora contributor makes translation changes and contributes
their
changes to Fedora under a specific license (e.g. BSD, because that is
what
upstream uses).
2. Fedora takes those contributions under the BSD license. (The FPCA
permits this, as long as the license is acceptable for Fedora, aka, a
Free
license.)
3. The upstream can take the changes from Fedora under BSD.
The way I see it, it’s impossible to verify whether all contributions
came implicitly-licensed, so would it be a safe assumption now to mark
the license in Weblate as CC-BY-SA-3.0? Neither Zanata nor Weblate
really account for each contribution possibly being licensed
differently.
Does that help?
Yes, it does, thank you.
--
Ernestas Kulik
Associate Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems (Core
Services/ABRT)
Red Hat Czech, s.r.o.
2:12 a.m.
New subject: Licensing translations provided via Zanata (and now Weblate)
Le 2020-01-10 08:13, Ernestas Kulik a écrit :
The way I see it, it’s impossible to verify whether all
contributions
came implicitly-licensed, so would it be a safe assumption now to mark
the license in Weblate as CC-BY-SA-3.0? Neither Zanata nor Weblate
really account for each contribution possibly being licensed
differently.
As a translator, I always assume the translation work I do is under the
license of the software I am translating.
If the software I am translating does not explicitly tells which license
is used, then it is CC-BY-SA, in accordance with FPCA.
Applying CC-BY-SA-3.0 on everything coming from Zanata would create a
giant mess.
We had 115 projects using Zanata [1] using a wide variety of licenses.
Daniel's question: I feel like translations should be given the same
license as the code in general. Does that have to be a "MUST" or is
"SHOULD" acceptable?
Thanks for your help,
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N_Move_to_Weblate
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3 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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Ernestas Kulik -
Jean-Baptiste Holcroft -
Tom Callaway