Comment 0 for bug 478902

Translations copyright section in the Terms of Use should be clearer regarding the fact that if you use any translation done in Launchpad, that work is being given to you under BSD license, not the license of your project. There's no license change directly from the author, but from the fact that your project's license is BSD-compatible. The author is the copyright owner and he's not giving you his work under the license adopted in your project, it is giving you his work under BSD.

The BSD text stands that it must be reporduced in derived works, and that's the point of an author giving his work to LP users under BSD x under any BSD-compatible license they wish. In the current approach, the BSD license *should* be included in your software package, because you are reusing a BSD work.

However I wonder how many people are actually aware that this is the correct procedure. Specially, when you download a .po file generated by Launchad, it should stand the license as BSD, not as "the same" of the underlying project. And it should include a copy of the BSD license inside or along with the .po file.

For avoiding the need of including the BSD license in the projects, I would change the terms of use like this:

Rather than "these translations are made available to Canonical and in turn to you under the BSD license", we could have "the author of these translations makes them available to Canonical and Launchpad users under any license they wish to use, as long as that license is BSD-compatible.". I think this is my core point.

If that for some reason is not possible, then I think the terms of use could have at least the mentioned clarification about the need of including the BSD text regardless of your project's license, and the exported .po files should have the BSD license attached somehow.

Below is an IRC conversation from #fsf:

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RenatoSilva: something seems wrong here: https://help.launchpad.net/TermsofUse#Translations%20copyright. It says that the work done in Launchpad is available under BSD for other users, rather than under the license of the underlying project using those translations, which would be perfectly possible, so that when you do a translaton in LP, you are automatically giving others the right of using your translations under BSD-compatible licenses. It's a license change allowed by the copyright owners and that's different from incorporating a BSD work into another with a different license.

RenatoSilva: I mean, according to the terms of use and the BSD text, all projects using translations from LP *should* include the BSD text in their packages regardless of the project license. However when e.g you download a .po file, it stands that its license is the same as the project, rather than explictly specifying it as the BSD one, which should be done according to the above terms.

RenatoSilva: I just wonder why not stand something different in the terms of use: "when you translate something in LP, you're automatically licensing your work under any BSD-compatible license, for any LP user that wishes to reuse that work". Therefore it would not require adding the BSD text, which I wonder if anyone currently does. [...]

RenatoSilva: Kamping_Kaiser: I think as I said above, there's no point to have a static licensing when you can have a copyright holder allowing another licenses.

Kamping_Kaiser: RenatoSilva: it ensures everything aquired from LP has a particular licence, irrespective of what might happen elseware.

RenatoSilva: that is, when I reuse a translation done by someone else in LP, that person is giving me the translation under the license of my project, because it's BSD compatible. But that's not how it works (according to the terms of use, but it seems that's how it's interpreted in pratice): currently, when I reuse a translation done by someone else in LP, he's giving me his work under BSD always, which obligates me to include the BSD text in my project, which I suspect too few peple actually do. My point is that the copyright holder does not need to give the work always under BSD, he can give the work under any license because he's the copyright owner. The advantage is that you would not need to include the BSD text. Your project keeps "mono-licensed".

RenatoSilva: however I must confess "BSD license" is much more clear than "any license BSD-compatible". Compatible would need some clear definition, and I wonder if it would be possible.

RenatoSilva: # Copyright (c) 2009 Rosetta Contributors and Canonical Ltd 2009
RenatoSilva: # This file is distributed under the same license as the moin-solenoid package.
RenatoSilva: This text ^^^^ is what you get when you download a .po generated by LP. It should not say "the same license", should say "BSD" if you follow the terms. However iirc that's a default message from gettext, maybe LP maintainers didn't notice that.