Copyright for translations and templates

[Marc Haber]

[please Cc me on answers, I am not subscribed to debian-i18n]

Hi,

licensing of translations and templates are a pet peeve of mine. I think
we often do not pay enough attention on this topic and I usually try to
do better in this regard. When a translator submits a translation for
one of my packages, I pay attention on a proper copyright notice in the
translation that I can refer to in debian/copyright without blushing in
shame.

I must however admit, that my preparatory work is often not as good as I
would like it to be. For example, some of adduser's manual page
translations have grown a copyright statement that assigns copyright to
the FSF without stating which license is to be applied. This cannot be
correct, and strictly speaking those translations need to be thrown out
and started over again with a proper license by a known translator.

In the past I was able to ignore this, but in the days of DEP-5 forced
attention to copyright and licenses I cannot overlook that any more.

What is the recommended way to handle this?

- throw all improperly licensed translations out and start over?
- ask a translator who submits a new translation to fix the copyright
statemennt, moving the burden of work from the package maintainer to
the translator? I have already had translators saying like "no, that's
not my job" to that request
- continue ignoring the subject?

And if that's not interesting enough, we strictly have two copyrights
applying to translation files: Once the author of the code/document
being translated, as the English version of the text is also in the po
file, and second the translator who has clearly authored the
translation.

Is it clearly documented how to handle this?

Greetings
Marc

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[Helge Kreutzmann]

Hello Marc,
(yes, I'm aware of the background)

On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 12:36:59PM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> licensing of translations and templates are a pet peeve of mine. I think
> we often do not pay enough attention on this topic and I usually try to
> do better in this regard. When a translator submits a translation for
> one of my packages, I pay attention on a proper copyright notice in the
> translation that I can refer to in debian/copyright without blushing in
> shame.

I'm doing quite a few L10N NMUs and I know that quit a few
debian/copyright ignore translations all together (unfortunately),
which I usually fix.

> I must however admit, that my preparatory work is often not as good as I
> would like it to be. For example, some of adduser's manual page
> translations have grown a copyright statement that assigns copyright to
> the FSF without stating which license is to be applied. This cannot be
> correct, and strictly speaking those translations need to be thrown out
> and started over again with a proper license by a known translator.

Why? You usually got the name. This is IMHO sufficient. The template
has some license, often "the same as upstream". Even if not copied
over, I think it is sensible to assume that this choice was carried
over - otherwise the translator could have denoted so[1]. And many
interfaces for translator do not stress license issues, so many
translators might not even aware of this problem. And for sure,
translations *only* work with the original software, putting a
proprietory license (in therory) on them, makes absolutely no sense.
So I think my reasoning is valid.

And for copyright: Stating "(C) My name" is nice, but not a
prerequisite. It just eases reasoning for later claims (e.g.
originality) which are less relevant for translations.

> - throw all improperly licensed translations out and start over?

This would be a large pitty. And I think you should only do this if
advised so by debian-legal. In a related case (#555168) it was not
necessary at all, but again, the situation was slightly different
there, but also (improper, copy past, wrong) statements did not force
exclusion.

> - ask a translator who submits a new translation to fix the copyright
> statemennt, moving the burden of work from the package maintainer to
> the translator? I have already had translators saying like "no, that's
> not my job" to that request

You can kindly ask, but as stated above, probably you first (and
again and again) need to explain this - and this person might not know
it either. For their translation, yes, but often they do not know the
previous translators either. So they are in the same situation as you,
having a name and maybe an e-mail address, which often does not work
anymore. So do not expect much, except that of course translators
should clarify their own work (i.e. in the header).

> - continue ignoring the subject?

No. What I always do is to simply assume the copyright is as the
template, but tools destroyed it[2], deleted it etc. So the translator
kept the license. I update debian/copyright accordingly and possibly
the po file as well (but be careful, chosing an editor which can
handle the charset).

This is IMHO the only way to handle the muddy past.

> And if that's not interesting enough, we strictly have two copyrights
> applying to translation files: Once the author of the code/document
> being translated, as the English version of the text is also in the po
> file, and second the translator who has clearly authored the
> translation.

For me (but I'm not a lawyer) a translation is a derived work. So the
license of the translation has to be part of the license of the
original work. And the copyright is joint, i.e. the authore of the
original strings and the translators. So for my view - nothing special
to see here.

> Is it clearly documented how to handle this?

This I don't know. At least several packages ignore this and I've seen
many debian/copyright *without* the copyright notice of the
translators, which is a pitty.

Greetings

Helge

[1] This is a fundamental question. If I copy over free code, modify
it and and remove the license, and then republish it. You can
state that I can only legally do this under a free license, so
assume that the license carries over. Or you can state that "if in
doubt, all rights reserved" and start suing all users of this
modified code.

[2] I did see cases with strange statements, e.g. in
package A a translation stating "same as B". Then I need to
clarify this, unless license A == license B.

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Dr. Helge Kreutzmann deb...@helgefjell.de
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