Re: ITP: squeak-vm, squeak-image, squeak-sources -- A highly portable Smaltalk system
> Merely Official Govt Documents and Laws, or literally any private contract
> between individuals?
Everything. When you require an official document or a contract to be
in French, the other party is not *legally* (there are a lot of abuses
on that side actually) entitled to refuse you. Of course, since a lot
of companies here are american or english-canadian, most of the
workers refrain from asking because they want to be employed. But it
is a right for them to require that.
I think the same thing applies in France.
> I would be surprised if the Canadian's regulated the language of private
> communications between private individuals.
It depends, I cannot sue you because you ask me your way in English.
But if we are going to start something together for which we have to
be bound by a contract, I can require you to give me a french version.
> Not trying to flame, just curious, asking for clarification.
Not trying to flame either. I can understand people to be astonished,
but I can understand why it is so here. The problem being that English
people generally don't have problem finding English speakers around
the world, so most of the time they don't bother learning another
language (which is correct in itself). But due to the english
domination until the late 60's, the french canadian have decided to
impose their right to exist as a culture. And I think this is correct
too.
> To me, this looks like "This agreement is written in English and will be
> discussed in English". Nothing wrong with that.
There comes something wrong when the Quebecer party doesn't speak a
word of english and is required to accept an english contract.
Actually, it means "if you don't know english, too bad for you; either
you accept this contract without understanding it, either you can't
use the program."
> 1) The reason for the "Agreement" is so that the writer has some legal
> protection despite not providing a french translation, after all, the
> reader/user "agreed" that was OK as part of the license...
Apple does have the financial means to hire a bilingual lawyer.
Actually, most of their "grand public" programs are distributed under
localized licenses. They just didn't want to bother with what they
consider free software. (which is not free in this case).
> 3) Finally, if this language issue is the only complaint, just cool it.
> What if some idiot, trying to help, wrote a very bad "translation" of the
> GPL in Elbonian, and it mistranslated "..your code is free.." into "..all
[...]
> Elbonian version of the license, plus or minus the usual bribes, etc. It's
> hard enough for the judicial system to "interpret" contracts, good luck
> getting any real justice if it's got to "interpret an interpretation" of a
> contract.
I can understand this for example for the FSF. People have translated
the GNU GPL under different languages, but since the FSF has not
enough money to do it, they didn't bother hiring a lawyer to check
those translations. Therefore they make them available and clearly
warn that those are not official translations.
Ethically, I don't have any problem with that. At least, they are
doing an effort to communicate with foreign people. In this case,
Apple, which is not a charity (I mean: really really not a charity),
doesn't want to put money on this though they could. And so I do have
an ethical problem with that, because instead of providing a
loose french translation and doing like the FSF, they tell you "if you
don't want to understand this is english, then you can't use that
program".
Wolfgang
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