Re: Please advise regarding DFSG compliance of WPL-2
On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 at 14:18, Christian Kastner <ckk@kvr.at> wrote:
>
> On 2019-02-19 09:58, Giacomo Tesio wrote:
> >> This is the informal English translation of Waqf General Public
> >> License. Anything but the Arabic version of the license has no
> >> value except for convenience of our English speaking users.
>
> [...]
>
> > - a Judge will very likely take into account any interpretation
> > issues due to errors in the translation distributed by the
> > Licensor and mitigate any violation reconducibile to such
> > errors.
>
> Careful! You are assigning legal value to a text that expressly
> disclaims any legal value.
>
> A judge will almost certainly not consider the English text, as it
> declares itself to be legally void.
I think you are misreading my statement.
I'm NOT saying that a Judge would consider the English text as legally
binding: only the Arabic version is.
I'm saying that Judges will consider all elements provided by the
parties and, if one party claims to have been fooled by a translation
error in the text distributed by the Licensor they will consider such
error as a Licensor's faulty, not a Licensee one.
Obviously this does NOT mean that the English translation would become
authoritative, the Licensee would have to cease and desist on any
activity not permitted by the Arabic license.
BUT
- the Licensor would likely be mandated to fix the translation
- no fee for damage or loss would be recognised to the Licensor
> > In no way it states that the translation is "rubbish" as Joerg called it.
>
> It may be useful from a user's perspective, but not from a legal
> standpoint, which I guess is what matters most to ftp-master.
The arguments above explains why it _might_ be enough to ftp-masters.
Assuming that the license doesn't pose other issues beyond the
language, at worst they might have to remove the package and any
dependencies from Debian.
However given that none of us is a lawyer, it's obviously a
responsibility they would take and they have the right to pass.
I'm IN NO WAY arguing that they should accept this license or any
other license they don't feel so inclined.
I'm just saying that if, to enter in Debian, the license of a package
must be in English, such requirement should be stated explicitly
somewhere.
If, as Joerg stated before, it's impossible to
> get enough DDs for every language that also know
> their way in legal foo to deal with it - and then have em join ftpteam.
having an English license become a pretty reasonable requirement.
I think that Joerg might be wrong on this, but I trust Debian to reach
a wise consensus on the topic.
Just, if he is right, this should not be left as "implicit", don't you think?
Giacomo
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