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?
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@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? _______________________________________________ legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org
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 =
- 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 =
- 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.
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,
-
Ernestas Kulik -
Jean-Baptiste Holcroft -
Tom Callaway