Re: Hinting console-setup for testing?

[Anton Zinoviev <anton@lml.bas.bg>]

Disclaimer: I do not want to argue about any of the following.  I am 
only raising some issues.  I am not suggesting what would be a good or a 
bad decision about the problem.

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 10:44:40AM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> Quoting Anton Zinoviev (anton@lml.bas.bg):
> 
> > None from me.  But no matter how we feel about it, #532842 means that 
> > 1.44 is breaking the law and this is realy not good.
> 
> "the" law? Come on.... That immediately leads to "what law?"

Almost every copyright law around the world.  For example the Bulgarian 
copyright law says the following:

= The author shall be entitled to [...] 2. claim the copyright over such 
= works; [...] 4. require that his name, pseudonym or other identifying 
= mark be identified in a suitable manner whenever his work is used.

And later:

= Non-economic rights under items 2 and 4 of paragraph 1 of the 
= preceding article are non-transferable. 

> We have a deal, here. Either we let a long overdue version enter
> testing and we deal with the issue later or we just block the whole
> system for several weeks because of a ridiculously missing Copyright
> statement.

Notice that most translators of console-setup are unaware of the change 
and despite that we have a complaint.

> I don't think that this problem is RC, indeed, and I propose 
> downgrading that bug to important.

I realy do not want to speak about the policies of Debian since I 
discovered they do not match my own convictions.

Nevertheless, I'd like to suggest consulting debian-legal first.

> > # This file is distributed under the same license as the console-setup package.
> 
> As long as translation of c-s is derived from the master file, this is
> simply not possible to do easily and, anyway, for what purpose?

I am not suggesting to do this.  I am only asking whether the old 
licence permits the change to the new license.

> > Also the lines
> > 
> > # Copyright (C) 2003 Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
> > 
> > are completely wrong - not only for the translations coming from 
> > console-setup, but also for the translations from d-i, unless the 
> > translators have sent to SPI a copyright transfer document.
> 
> Sure, this is done this ridiculous way for about 5 years.

Which is unfortunate.  This gives a formal reason to any of the 
contrubutors to sue SPI especialy given that the problem is known.

> And probably dozens, if not hundrreds, of Debconf translations have
> this. Do we really want to raise an RC bug against each concerned package?

The problem is specific only to packages whose translations were not 
maintained by the d-i infrastructure for a while.  This is perhaps not a 
big problem for the udebs because when their translations were moved to 
a common master file this didn't change the maintainer of the 
translations.

> Indeed, it's quite some time since I try to change this in the area I
> can do something: French debconf translations now carry the French
> l10n mailing list as copyright holder, which is as close to reality as
> it can be. This is done systematically when translations are updated,
> with the consent of the person formerly mentioned in the copyright
> statement.

The problem with this is that the right to require proper copyright 
notice is not revocable.  If we have the consent of the concerned person 
then this is OK, but in any time in future he or she may require a 
proper copyright notice to be added.

> For other languages, that's the various translators' problem to assign
> the copyright properly. If they don't, we shouldn't do it on their
> behalf.

OK, but then it becomes our responsibility to remove completely 
translations that do not satisfy the policies of Debian. :)

Anton Zinoviev