Re: Translations of GPL
On Fri, 14 Jan 2000, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > The background of this iedea was that I'd like to ship a German
> > fortune cookie database with a GPL in German language. Someone
> > told me that this is not valid, at least it is not THE GPL.
>
> Indeed. And it would be questionable if a translation of the GPL would be
> GPL compatible. It would at least be very expensive (lawyer wise) to verify
> this.
Agreed.
> > In my opinion a German cookie database makes only sense for people
> > who understand a German license and not necessarily have to understand
> > an English one.
>
> Yes, but here you have to also look at the higher goal of world domination
> ;)
Agreed. :)
> > How to cope with that fact, which could occure in several other
> > cases?
>
> I think it is best to stick with known licenses, not with variations of them
> (and translations are variations).
Agreed.
But: I wonder how we could cope with the following situation when
Debian is so good translated in every essential part, that the knowledge
of English language is not necessary to install it and work with it.
(I've heard rumors, that there are people in the world which runs
Computers without knowing any English word ;-).) OK, this point will
(unfortunately) not be reached in the near future, but I think it should
be a long term aim. But then we are in the situation that a potential
user could use the system but does not know if he is allowed to do
so because he doesn't understand the License.
How to solve this trouble?
Kind regards
Andreas.
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