Re: Licenses of .po files, and translations

[Gora Mohanty <gora sarai net>]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:53:21 +0200
Gudmund Areskoug <gudmundpublic gmail com> wrote:

> Axel Hecht skrev:
> > FWIW, in the Mozilla project, we consider translations to be derivative work.
> > 
> > Which is what we consider, I wouldn't know that any lawyer looked at it for us.
> 
> It is/may be derivative work, but the copyright to a translation belongs
>  to the translator by default.

> Since it is or may be derivative, the translator mostly can't do
> whatever she likes with the translation, but nobody else can do anything
> with the translation unless the translator says so.

Yes, the copyright undoubtedly belongs to the translator. The
question involves licensing terms. If the .pot file was under
the GPL, is the .po file a derivative work, and hence under
the GPL, too? A secondary question is, if an existing .po
file, which is explicitly licensed under the GPL, is added to
by another translator, is the new translation also under the
GPL?

My opinion would be yes, in both cases, though it is much less
clear in the first case. There, since the strings are derived
from the source code, and since the .pot file says that the
licence is the same as that for the base package, my opinion
is that if the application is under the GPL, so is the .pot file.

Maybe we should get a legal opinion on this.

Regards,
Gora