[FOSS-GPS] FoxtrotGPS: Call for translations!

[Timo Jyrinki]

2010/5/12 Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin at geekspace.com>:
> But, unfortunately for the translators, they cannot produce
> BSD-licensed translations from a GPL'd source without a specific
> allowance from the original copyright-holders; whether we could
> convert the copies that we integrate back to being GPL'd afterward
> is moot.

The translations are entered one string at a time in Launchpad. So
when/if a translator creates a new translated sentence in Launchpad,
that translated string only will be licensed with BSD for the part it
is in Launchpad database. However, for the part it is part of
FoxtrotGPS translation, it's GPL licensed. So it's actually a kind of
dual-licensing model (BSD relicensed to other licenses) that allows:
1) Any license to be used in the actual project
2) Launchpad phrasebook database (those strings only submitted via
Launchpad) to be used by any other project

What case do you think is missing there? When you wrote "they cannot
produce BSD-licensed translations from a GPL'd source", there is no
such thing happening. The translations from GPL'd source package will
be kept under GPL, but when a new translated string is created with
Launchpad, it is (effectively) dual-licensed for that specific string
so that both the project can use it under GPL and others may use that
specific translation for other identical strings.

Is this the remaining issue for you:
1) A string "How do you do?" is included in GPL'd source
2) The string "How do you do?" is quoted from the source as an item to
be translated in Launchpad
3) The translator interprets the quotation and produces an own
copyrighted (to the extent single strings can be copyrighted, depends
I guess) translated string of how she thinks such an English string
should be written in a different language
4) You think that the GPL from source means individual translations of
individual quoted strings are derivative works of the source and thus
the user translating those cannot say the translation is BSD licensed?

I don't think 4) is true, but I understand it's a thing of quite deep
discussions. For some possibly helpful references, see
https://help.launchpad.net/Translations/LicensingFAQ , one earlier
discussion at http://www.linux-archive.org/launchpad-user/116198-rosetta-after-31-july-2008-a.html
and another https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-translators/2008-July/001619.html

If you do think 4) applies, then basically well this is not the
correct forum for discussing it as such, since currently hundreds of
GPL'd projects are using Launchpad for translations, plus the ca. 1300
templates used in Ubuntu of which probably more than half are GPL
licensed software. All in all hundreds of thousands of Launchpad
translated strings in tens of languages. Filing a bug at
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/rosetta that describes the problem
perfectly enough to overcome the discussions during the past two
years, would be (probably...) welcome for the community.

I do understand, though, that if you think this is the case, you
wouldn't want to have Launchpad translations to be used since you
think Launchpad translators wouldn't have a permission of submitting
new translations under non-GPL to Launchpad database (on the other
hand, if they are not permitted, they are also not doing that and it's
GPL all the way, although ugly).

But, this is mainly your fork so far, so it's also your call. I accept
anything, since I can anyway offer translations via bzr branches
unlike most "normal" translators. Although I cannot help with anything
else than Launchpad. As for Pootle, it does work to an extent - it
just totally lacks QA at least when used for individual projects. I'd
probably suggest http://www.transifex.net/ above it, although that
I've only very briefly used to submit a few Fedora and Moblin related
translations in the past. I'm not sure if it has other problems.

-Timo