Re: About the license of L10n products
Axel Hecht
> Hello.
> My name is Jihui Choi.
>
> I'm trying to make a glossary for Korean amateur translators.
> I collected a lot of files from KDE, GNOME, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, GIMP and
> Launchpad of Ubuntu. Sources from
> - GNOME : http://git.gnome.org/cgit/
> - KDE : svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/l10n-kde4/ko
> - OpenOffice.org : http://www.sunvirtuallab.com:32300/
> - Firefox : ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/linux-i686/xpi/ko.xpi
> - GIMP : http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gimp/ http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gimp-gap/
> - Launchpad : https://translations.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+language-packs
>
>
> I have some questions about the license. If you help me or introduce me someone
> who can help me, I'll really appreciate to you. :)
>
> 1. KDE and GNOME includes many projects. Does each project have their own
> license, or only projects which are published as a specific license like as GPL
> or BSD? For example, every L10n works on Launchpad are under BSD, aren't them?
>
> 2. If each project has their own license for their L10n works, how can I handle
> those if I want to collect them and reproduce something using them.
> I'm making a glossary using many L10n works from many projects.
>
> 3. Can I publish and share my glossary under GPL? If I can, which version
> should I use, v3.0 or v2.0? There are several licenses, for GNOME, KDE and
> GIMP are GPL, LGPL for OpenOffice, Firefox has MPL and BSD for Launchpad.
> I wonder whether I can mix all these licenses and publish under a specific
> license such as GPL.
>
>
> I'd like to share my works under GPL or similar it and works with many people.
> However, before that I think I should make to be clear about the license.
> Here is my demo. http://gloss.mr-dust.pe.kr/
>
> Please check my demo and help me. Thank you, all.
>
Redirecting to mozilla.legal.
In general, you're asking questions hard enough to warrant getting
actual legal advice and not just people's opinion. In particular the
license on launchpad stuff.
Firefox localizations that we host are under MPL/GPL/LGPL, see
http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/ for the precise terms.
You could choose to use the GPL license of that. Whether projects can
use your glossary then back for Firefox localizations (or Thunderbird),
is a completely different question, and rather likely a "no".
That said, those are my personal opinions, I am not a lawyer. You do
want a lawyer, though. Depending on your local laws, you may or may not
need to get that response in a one-on-one setup.
Axel
Gervase Markham
>> 1. KDE and GNOME includes many projects. Does each project have their own
>> license, or only projects which are published as a specific license
>> like as GPL
>> or BSD? For example, every L10n works on Launchpad are under BSD,
>> aren't them?
You would need to ask the KDE and GNOME projects, but my understanding
is that each project has its own licence - although most use the GPL.
>> 2. If each project has their own license for their L10n works, how can
>> I handle
>> those if I want to collect them and reproduce something using them.
>> I'm making a glossary using many L10n works from many projects.
You may end up finding that this is not possible. It depends on which
sources you use, and the licenses attached to them.
>> 3. Can I publish and share my glossary under GPL? If I can, which version
>> should I use, v3.0 or v2.0? There are several licenses, for GNOME, KDE
>> and
>> GIMP are GPL, LGPL for OpenOffice, Firefox has MPL and BSD for Launchpad.
Firefox and Mozilla code, including the Korean translation, is available
under your choice of three licences - the MPL, the LGPL or the GPL. So
if you are looking to make your glossary GPLed, then you can include
information gained from Firefox.
However, you would have to consider the possibility that your glossary
could only be _used_ by GPLed projects in the case, because use of it
might make the target translation a derivative work of the glossary.
Gerv
timeless
> However, you would have to consider the possibility that your glossary could
> only be _used_ by GPLed projects in the case, because use of it might make
> the target translation a derivative work of the glossary.
I'd like to highlight this bit. Depending on your goal, and assuming
that Gerv's conclusion (and neither he nor I are lawyers) is correct,
you might be creating something which is less than useful for a large
portion of the population.
Hypothetically you could be creating a glossary that couldn't be used
by Mozilla contributors to improve Mozilla. This part hinges on
'Derived work'.
You definitely should contact a lawyer.
My personal view on l10n is actually quite different, but I haven't
spent the necessary money to collect support for it, so I will not
share it here.
I do work on a translation and I'd probably choose to actively ignore
any project with a glossary under a license that isn't commercial, BSD
or PD (especially anything with a viral license). Note that
'commercial' tends to be "you've paid for the right to use this, so as
long as you don't sell your own copies of it, you're free to use it"
(e.g. when you buy a classic dead tree book), if the commercial
license is more restrictive than that, i probably wouldn't buy or us
it either.