Standard way to mention copyright holder in PO files

Nicolas François · External Since: Jan 06, 2005 Posts: 48

Hello,

It would be nice to have a standard way to mention copyright holders in PO
files. Currently, the copyright holders are mentioned (manually?) in the
comments of the header, for example using the template generated by
xgettext:

# SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
# Copyright (C) YEAR THE PACKAGE'S COPYRIGHT HOLDER
# This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package.
# FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.

It would be nice if copyright owners could be added to that list by PO
editors. Some people do that manually, but that could be quite dangerous
to do it automatically with by tools since the comments of PO headers are
usually hand edited and contain other data.

I wonder if the copyright holders could not be specified in some header
fields. PO editors could update automatically the list of copyright
holders and dates.

I'm thinking about something like:

"Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
"Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL.RemoveThis@li.org>\n"
"Translator[0]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR\n"
"Translator[1]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR, YEAR\n"
"Translator[2]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR, YEAR-YEAR\n"

What do you think?
--
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Ming Hua · External Since: Nov 16, 2006 Posts: 33

On Sat, Jul 07, 2007 at 04:19:15PM +0200, Nicolas François wrote:
>
> I wonder if the copyright holders could not be specified in some header
> fields. PO editors could update automatically the list of copyright
> holders and dates.

I agree with the general idea of unified format for copyright
informations, but I don't think using PO header fields as below will
cover all situations.

> I'm thinking about something like:
>
> "Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
> "Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL RemoveThis @li.org>\n"
> "Translator[0]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR\n"
> "Translator[1]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR, YEAR\n"
> "Translator[2]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR, YEAR-YEAR\n"

What about the translations whose copyright is transfered to FSF (which
is acutally quite common, either due to explicit request by FSF, such as
all the TP translations, or due to careless translators just using the
default header generated by gettext) or (in Debian's case) SPI?

What about some translators that don't want to hold copyright for
his/her translation, but the team still want to credit his/her work by
listing him/her as a translator?

Ming
2007.07.07

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Nicolas François · External Since: Jan 06, 2005 Posts: 48

Hi,

On Sat, Jul 07, 2007 at 08:54:08PM -0500, Ming Hua wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 07, 2007 at 04:19:15PM +0200, Nicolas François wrote:
> >
> > I wonder if the copyright holders could not be specified in some header
> > fields. PO editors could update automatically the list of copyright
> > holders and dates.
>
> I agree with the general idea of unified format for copyright
> informations, but I don't think using PO header fields as below will
> cover all situations.

I was willing to answer these questions (both technical and legal):
* Who can be contacted when the last translator do not respond anymore?
* Who has to be contacted if the translation must be relicensed?
* Who holds the copyright of a PO file?

We can easily deal with the first 2 points.

> > I'm thinking about something like:
> >
> > "Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
> > "Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL RemoveThis @li.org>\n"
> > "Translator[0]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR\n"
> > "Translator[1]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR, YEAR\n"
> > "Translator[2]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR, YEAR-YEAR\n"
>
> What about the translations whose copyright is transfered to FSF (which
> is acutally quite common, either due to explicit request by FSF, such as
> all the TP translations, or due to careless translators just using the
> default header generated by gettext) or (in Debian's case) SPI?
>
> What about some translators that don't want to hold copyright for
> his/her translation, but the team still want to credit his/her work by
> listing him/her as a translator?

We could differentiate
Copyright (C) FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR
and
FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR

It would be up to the PO editor to ask the translator, on a per file
basis, or based on an existing fake translator set to:
Copyright (C) Free Software Foundation, Inc., YEAR
whether 'Copyright (C)' must be added.

Otherwise, we can also add a section in the header's comment whose format
would be standardized (in addition to the list of translators).
Something like:

#### COPYRIGHT ##############################################################
##
## Copyright (C) YEAR COPYRIGHT HOLDER
## Copyright (C) YEAR COPYRIGHT HOLDER
##
###############################################################################

Kind Regards,
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Nicolas François · External Since: Jan 06, 2005 Posts: 48

Hello,

On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 09:49:06AM +0200, Helge Kreutzmann wrote:
> Hello,
> On Sat, Jul 07, 2007 at 08:54:08PM -0500, Ming Hua wrote:
> > What about the translations whose copyright is transfered to FSF (which
> > is acutally quite common, either due to explicit request by FSF, such as
> > all the TP translations, or due to careless translators just using the
> > default header generated by gettext) or (in Debian's case) SPI?
>
> I guess you can't code around careless users, you can just provide a
> default which will be in a way desired by non-careless users.
>
> > What about some translators that don't want to hold copyright for
> > his/her translation, but the team still want to credit his/her work by
> > listing him/her as a translator?
>
> Well, in some (many?) parts of the world you can't get rid of
> copyright. For example, in Europe you don't assign your copyright to
> the FSF, but rather give them a permission for unlimted use. But I
> assume that the entry in the tools would be configurable (i.e. default
> to the GECOS field, but allow for "anonymous" or "Joe Buck") and then
> it would be up to the language team to accept / reject those entries.
>
> While ownership of copyright is important, I think a clear indication
> of license is more important, so that for anonymous authors it is
> at least clear that they intended to release their translation under a
> certain copyleft license.

I would also really like to have the license specified in the PO files.

One problem is that translators are not always aware of licenses and do
not know how to specify it in the PO file.

I think having a header's field requiring the license could force them to
think about it.

We could standardize some values like:

"Licence: GPLv2\n"
"Licence: Same license as the PACKAGE package\n"
"Licence: See header's comments\n"
"Licence: See FILE\n"

Kind Regards,
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Ming Hua · External Since: Nov 16, 2006 Posts: 33

On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 09:49:06AM +0200, Helge Kreutzmann wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 07, 2007 at 08:54:08PM -0500, Ming Hua wrote:
> > What about the translations whose copyright is transfered to FSF (which
> > is acutally quite common, either due to explicit request by FSF, such as
> > all the TP translations, or due to careless translators just using the
> > default header generated by gettext) or (in Debian's case) SPI?
>
> I guess you can't code around careless users, you can just provide a
> default which will be in a way desired by non-careless users.

I agree it's hard to code around careless users. But that doesn't
really answer my question, which is about what to do when the copyright
holder and the translator is not the same person/entity.

> > What about some translators that don't want to hold copyright for
> > his/her translation, but the team still want to credit his/her work by
> > listing him/her as a translator?
>
> Well, in some (many?) parts of the world you can't get rid of
> copyright. For example, in Europe you don't assign your copyright to
> the FSF, but rather give them a permission for unlimted use.

Yes I have heard about this. Does that mean public domain is not a
really valid concept in such countries? (I realize this is a legal
quesiton and is probably off-topic on debian-i18n.)

Ming
2007.07.08

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Ming Hua · External Since: Nov 16, 2006 Posts: 33

On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 02:14:11PM +0200, Nicolas François wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 07, 2007 at 08:54:08PM -0500, Ming Hua wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 07, 2007 at 04:19:15PM +0200, Nicolas François wrote:
>
> > > I'm thinking about something like:
> > >
> > > "Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
> > > "Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL.DeleteThis@li.org>\n"
> > > "Translator[0]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR\n"
> > > "Translator[1]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR, YEAR\n"
> > > "Translator[2]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR, YEAR-YEAR\n"
> >
> > What about the translations whose copyright is transfered to FSF (which
> > is acutally quite common, either due to explicit request by FSF, such as
> > all the TP translations, or due to careless translators just using the
> > default header generated by gettext) or (in Debian's case) SPI?
> >
> > What about some translators that don't want to hold copyright for
> > his/her translation, but the team still want to credit his/her work by
> > listing him/her as a translator?
>
> We could differentiate
> Copyright (C) FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR
> and
> FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR

What do you think of using "Copyright-Holder" field? IMHO, if we decide
to start using fields to record the copyright/license field, we'd better
try putting all necessary information in the fields, instead of having a
"need to check both file header and information fields" situation. That
would unavoidably lead to controversial information. I also like the
idea of "License" field.

Ming
2007.07.08

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MJ Ray · External Since: Jun 02, 2005 Posts: 273

Helge Kreutzmann <debian RemoveThis @helgefjell.de> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 09:57:53AM -0500, Ming Hua wrote:
> > Yes I have heard about this. Does that mean public domain is not a
> > really valid concept in such countries? (I realize this is a legal
> > quesiton and is probably off-topic on debian-i18n.)
>
> Yes. There is no public domain in Europe. [...]

Hello debian-i18n, this is England calling! As I understand it, we
have a public domain (so the above "there is no public domain in
Europe" is not true, same as the cannot-assign-copyright is not true
in all Europe), but there is no tried-and-tested current way to put a
work into the public domain (in the copyright sense) - we have to wait
for copyright to expire, so much of what else was written is true.

> But I guess this thread rather belongs to debian-legal.

If you ask debian-legal, please ask specific questions, such as which
packages are involved and where the various parties live, as the
answers on this do vary...

Regards,
--
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Experienced webmaster-developers for hire http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
Also: statistician, sysadmin, online shop builder, workers co-op.
Writing on koha, debian, sat TV, Kewstoke http://mjr.towers.org.uk/

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MJ Ray · External Since: Jun 02, 2005 Posts: 273

Helge Kreutzmann <debian DeleteThis @helgefjell.de> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 11:36:16PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> > Hello debian-i18n, this is England calling! [...]
>
> Yes, sorry, my mistake. I meant "continental Europe" [...]

Although common among the red-tops, that phrase is also inaccurate:
the islands are on the same continental plate as the most of Europe.

Please use "many European countries" or something similar if that's
what's meant.

Regards,
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My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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"Felipe Augusto van de Wi · External Since: May 28, 2006 Posts: 78

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On 07/07/2007 11:19 AM, Nicolas François wrote:
> Hello,
>
> It would be nice to have a standard way to mention copyright holders in PO
> files. Currently, the copyright holders are mentioned (manually?) in the
> comments of the header, for example using the template generated by
> xgettext:
>
> # SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
> # Copyright (C) YEAR THE PACKAGE'S COPYRIGHT HOLDER
> # This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package.
> # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.
>
> It would be nice if copyright owners could be added to that list by PO
> editors. Some people do that manually, but that could be quite dangerous
> to do it automatically with by tools since the comments of PO headers are
> usually hand edited and contain other data.
>
> I wonder if the copyright holders could not be specified in some header
> fields. PO editors could update automatically the list of copyright
> holders and dates.
>
> I'm thinking about something like:
>
> "Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
> "Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL DeleteThis @li.org>\n"
> "Translator[0]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR\n"
> "Translator[1]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR, YEAR\n"
> "Translator[2]: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR, YEAR-YEAR\n"
>
> What do you think?

I fully support the idea. Smile

Kind regards,
- --
Felipe Augusto van de Wiel (faw)
"Debian. Freedom to code. Code to freedom!"
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