copyright files in other languages
Guy Maor asks:
> There's currently a package in Incoming, sympa, with a copyright file
> written in French. This raises a host of potential problems, and may
> require some policy changes.
IMHO we should simply put the French copyright file in the distribution...
> Should an English translation be required? Currently a user need only
> speak English to decide if a package is free enough for him.
...because *requiring* an English distribution is discrimination! Yes, we
can require that a user speaks French (or Swahili or any other langage) to
read a copyright file if the maintainer of the package provides the
copyright file in that language. Debian is not a priori an "English"
system but will eventually exist in a number of languages.
> What if the translation is wrong and implies that a free package is
> non-free or vice-versa? We should request that the upstream author bless
> the translation. If we're unable to do this we can perhaps write in the
> copyright file that this version is not canonical, and that copyright.fr
> (for example) is. I'm not sure if this is a good idea.
You are right: this is a bad idea. Making English canonical is what will
make the problems pop up: some people will be unhappy ("can I no longer
make a fully-german Debian derivative?"). Ignoring the language issue will
not create problems because it is the only way Debian can claim that "users
are assumed omni-lingual" (which we need because otherwise Debian has to be
closed because we are not permitted to discriminate against any groups...).
> Maybe translations are only required for non-free packages? For free
> packages the user is happy with DFSG-freeness. But the user might
> want certain abilities that DFSG-free packages don't necessarily have.
Yes, IMO users who cannot speak the language of the copyright file (or the
documentation or whatever) will just have to make do.
Normally this will not be a big problem because the language used in a
package normally corresponds to the language used by the wannabe users.
Cheers,
Kristoffer
--
Kristoffer Høgsbro Rose, phd, prof.associé <http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~krisrose>
addr. LIP, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 46 Allée d'Italie, F-69364 Lyon 7
phone +33(0)4 7272 8642, fax +33(0)4 7272 8080 <Kristoffer.Rose@ENS-Lyon.FR>
pgp f-p: A4D3 5BD7 3EC5 7CA2 924E D21D 126B B8E0 <krisrose@{debian,tug}.org>
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