Re: ocaml, QPL and the DFSG: New ocaml licence proposal.
On Sat, Jul 31, 2004 at 10:11:38AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 07:48:17PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > Moreover, we need these licenses to be recognized as open-source by
> > Debian and other authorities before even considering to use them.
>
> The problem you are going to end up with for this, though, is that there is
> no authoritative English version of the licences. The translation of the
Bah, whatever, the first and only copy of this licence i have seen was in
english, so what is the problem ?
> CECILL licence we've seen so far was non-authoritative, and hence no actual
> decision can be made about it's freeness. Most of the organisations you're
> going to want to get recognition from are primarily English-speaking
> organisations. You might be able to get FSF-Europe to give the OK for the
> FSF, if they've got good French-speaking licence analysers, and if OSI's
I don't care, i want debian to give its ok.
> licence vetting process is what I've heard it is (trusting the drafting
> lawyer's assertion that it's OK) you might be OK there, but I doubt
> debian-legal is going to be able to discuss a licence without an
> authoritative English version to work from.
So, everybody here should learn french :)
No, seriously, we have enough french speaking developers that this should not
be a problem, and since there is an english translation (and as said, the
first link i found was a 9 page or so english PDF), this should be no major
problem. Also, i believe that this is one of the usefull input you could
provide to the comittee developing those licences, don't you think.
> The other problem with only having a French licence is that anyone who can't
> fluently read French is going to have no idea what the terms are under which
> they can modify the software. That's going to mean that you'll either have
> a lot of potential contributors down the tubes, or a lot of people
> infringing your licence without knowing it. Relying on an unofficial
> translation of the licence isn't going to help much, either.
Bah. It is no worse than the lha japanese licence, but i think that your
worries are exagerated, and that there will be an english translation of it.
> Note that these problems do also exist for English language licences and
> non-English speakers, but in practical terms they are diminished because
> (for better or worse) most people have at least a basic knowledge of
> English.
We are well forced to it.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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