Hi all,
I searched the archives of -legal for anything similar to this, but could
not find anything. Excuse me if this has already been discussed, I would
then be grateful for a pointer. Also, please keep me CC'ed, as I'm not
subscribed to -legal.
While translating a pot file into German, I found that the program prints
its license terms via gettext. Therefore, the license itself appears in the
list of translatable messages.
Specifically, it uses the GPL with the following paragraphs:
"This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify\n"
"it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by\n"
"the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at\n"
"your option) any later version.\n"
"\n"
"This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but\n"
"WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of\n"
"MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU\n"
"General Public License, /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL, for more details\n"
My first thought was to look up the translation on www.gnu.org, and they
offer an unofficial translation of the GPL into German. I included the
corresponding two paragraphs and sent the file for reviewing to our German
translation coordination list.
However, we could not decide whether translating a license is ok or not. We
tend to think that we should better *not* translate the paragraphs.
Please note that there's still a pointer to the original license
(/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL) which is in English. The translation would
only apply to the informational text above, leaving the full license
intact.
Would this already qualify as "re-licensing", which we obviously cannot do?
Or merely a help to better understand the terms and conditions?
Cheers,
--
Tobias
Warning: Trespassers will be shot.
Survivors will be shot again.
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