On Mon, Aug 23, 2004 at 02:39:22PM +0200, Nicolas CANIART wrote: > > (Yes, the clause repeats itself; I have no idea why.) > > At http://cecill.info/faq.en.html#clarification parapraph 2, it is said > that this is a translation bug and it will be corrected in the "next > version" (no date given ...)
Noting licensing translation problems in a FAQ instead of actually fixing them doesn't inspire confidence in these people (no more than the fact that they put their licensing terms in PDF ...) > It is also explained in the FAQ, but of course I don't think the FAQ has > any legal value :-\ > GPL="It is the GNU General Public License in its current version at the > time of the writing of CeCILL, i.e. version 2." As long as it's from the copyright holders, I think it's safe to take this as a license clarification. > > 2: make sure that the French language version of this clause has no > > problems. You'll need to find somebody who can read French legalese. > > I do speak french, but actually not the same as french lawyers :), but > I may be able to find some help... Very few of us are lawyers, either. We've just read a few licenses and know a couple pitfalls to look out for. > > This is also a more general issue: how do we deal with licenses that we > > can't read, in the general case? We assume that Debian users can read > > English > > If english/american laws are written with the same french as french laws > are, assuming that is a bit hazardous IMHO. I'm not sure what you meant, here. If you're saying that licenses can be hard to read even for native speakers, you're right; but there's nothing we can do about that. > Personnaly i speak enough english to understand and use software but I'm > not shure I could dodge all text laws language tricks. > This is what, in fact, has impulsed my first message. I though that > having a license in french may allow more (french-speaking) people to > have confidence in the license under which they place their softwares (or > the software they use is placed). I think that it's fine to have licenses in other languages; I just think that there should always be an authoritative license in English, too. That is, if a person wants to have a French (or any other language) license, that's fine, but also include an English version--and give *both* the force of a license. If the two differ, both of them count; everyone gets the permissions they're able to read. (In other words, dual license under the terms of both languages. If they're the same, this is a no-op.) I don't think it's acceptable to have a /usr/share/doc/foo/copyright that doesn't include a *binding* English version. The general case would lead to having those files in a dozen different languages, and nobody anywhere would actually be able to understand their rights (except for linguists); everyone would have to trust in a non-binding translation and the word of somebody they don't know that it's equivalent to the real terms. (This is, at present, only my opinion, of course.) > > I'd suggest that you send the results of any discussions to them yourself, > > if you think they'd be interested; you'll have better luck with that than > > asking us to send blind emails to people we know nothing about. :) > > I don't know them much more than you... :) You at least appear to know what they do, and whatever it is, you're interested in it; all I know is this license. :) -- Glenn Maynard
