Re: Non-English software
On Sun, 20 May 2001, Radovan Garabik wrote:
> ...
> > Please go ahead. If someone non-Swedish finds the software in
> > Debian packages and feels it is very useful, he/she may start
> > a project to translate it into English or other languages. It
> > is exciting!
> > However, the software will have to have a license document in English.
> No. Why should debian force authors/maintainers to write licenses
> in English? IIRC, the consensus of the last discussion about
> non-english licenses was that the original license is legally
> binding and the english translation serves only as a description
> and hint about the real license for us linguistically challenged
> IMHO short notice in debian/copyright in English, saying something like:
> "The original license in Swedish says you can freely distribute, use and
> modify the program" is enough.
> FWIW, my next free software project will have a license in Esperanto
If your license is in Esperanto, how can anyone in Debian be sure that your
license passes DFSG? Even a translation explaining the license is difficult,
unless the translated terms are also treated as having the force of the
license; otherwise, a mistake in the translation could result in us putting a
package in main that belongs in non-free, or worse, violating the license
terms by including the software in Debian.
Since English is the lingua franca of debian-legal, I think the main reason
for wanting licenses in English is so that we can protect ourselves from legal
troubles.
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
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