Re: BSD licence

[danilo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Danilo Šegan)]

Hi Bruno,

Yesterday at 14:13, Bruno Patri wrote:

> On Thursday 03 July 2008 12:51:33 you wrote:
>> Hi Bruno,
>>
>> On Tuesday at 18:53, Bruno Patri wrote:
>> > In my opinion, it's just the opposite, BSD is worse than the FSF
>> > disclaimer.
>> >
>> > http://translationproject.org/disclaim.txt
>> > "I disclaim all
>> > copyright interest in my works, which consist of translation of
>> > portions of free software programs from one human language to another
>> > human language,
>>
>> This ("I disclaim...") means that you are putting your translations in
>> public domain.
>
> This means that the work ""that i have provided"" to FSF is Not copyrighted 
> (FSF documentation is very clear about this, public domain means not 
> copyrighted) It doesn't mean that this work is going to be published in public 
> domain.

Ok, public domain == not copyrighted, and it's all already published
on translationproject.org.  Nobody needs a license to use public
domain stuff.

This is to protect GNU software from nasty translators (i.e. those
illegally submitting translations [imagine SCO adding some
translations then claiming how somebody else infringed their
copyrigts], then suing FSF over it), not to protect translations from
being misused (and I am not saying protecting them is not a worthy
goal, it's just impractical).

> I don't think so. This disclaimer is not a license. The work I've done is only 
> provided to FSF and then FSF publish it under GPL. In my opinion there's no 
> way for proprietary software to re-use this work. That's why I think that BSD 
> license is worse than this kind of disclaimer.

I respect your opinion, but IANAL and I don't want to argue over
this.  You are, indeed, free to choose not to trust me.

>> > As far as I can understand it, the last sentence gives me the guarantee
>> > that my translations can not be used in proprietary software. There's
>> > nothing about "public domain" in this disclaimer.
>>
>> 'Copyright disclaimer' means that you claim to have no interest in
>> copyrights over your work (dis-claim == negation of "claim").  That's
>> exactly what putting into public domain is.
>
> Yes but again this disclaimer is not a public license, it's some kind of 
> private contract between FSF and a contributor.

I believe that Benno Schulenberg (who is currently running Translation
Project, and who has actually revitalised it, so I trust he knows what
he's talking about) has already responded confirming that you are in
fact putting your PO files into public domain.

I'd like to help convince you we are not planning on doing any harm.
Still, I believe everybody is using a similar licensing (public
domain, or lax licensing like BSD) for translations simply because
that's the only practical way to do it.  If anyone ever comes up with
a practical way to do it, I'd be first to jump on that train.


Cheers,
Danilo