[GRASS translations] Re: [GRASS-PSC] Update: Translation Licensing in Rosetta

[Brad Douglas]

On Thu, 2006-12-07 at 00:00 +1300, Hamish wrote:
> Brad Douglas wrote:
> > From what I read, it only gives the submitter co-copyright for the
> > particular project being submitted to.  After that, Canonical
> > apparently has sole copyright to work the submission into whatever
> > package they see fit.  And there's no guarantee that they won't change
> > the copyright terms at any point in the future.
> 
> "All translations submitted into Rosetta are the work of the translator
> that created them, and are submitted under the same license as the
> software being translated."
> 
> so all contibutions are GPL. Canonical can take the Rosetta
> contributions and sell them if they want, but that doesn't affect us
> directly -- they can't revoke the GPL from the contributed translations.

You are correct that it does not affect GRASS, directly, but it does
affect the author, which may indirectly affect GRASS.

Rosetta is a really great idea, but the legal page does not impress me,
nor have I seen any of the (BSD) "updates" Markus spoke of.  It would be
useful to have a representative from Rosetta join the discussion.

My biggest concern is the possibility of turning over copyrights after
the author has submitted it to the intended project via Rosetta.  They
should be clear that the author maintains copyright, but assigns some
rights to Rosetta to redistribute.  AFAICT, the only reason Rosetta
wants (co-?)copyright is to take the sting out of relicensing for
projects with differing licenses.  That is an innocuous use I support.
Assuming intellectual property rights for monetary gain is something I
do not support (which I highly doubt is their intention).


-- 
Brad Douglas <rez touchofmadness com>                    KB8UYR/6
Address: 37.493,-121.924 / WGS84    National Map Corps #TNMC-3785