In the US, translations are an original copyrighted work, not a derivative
copyrighted work.
That said, the Fedora FPCA is different from most CLAs, in that its sole
purpose is to ensure that Fedora has permission to use contributions
without an explicit license under a Free license (MIT for code, CC-BY-SA
for content). If a contribution is made with a different Free license (e.g.
same as the upstream), Fedora uses that licensing.
So, lets step through the process:
= No explicit license =
1. A Fedora contributor makes translation changes and contributes their
changes to Fedora, without indicating a license.
2. The Fedora FPCA says that Fedora (and anyone who receives that
contribution from Fedora) can use that change under CC-BY-SA (I'm guessing
that translations count as content).
3. The upstream can take the changes from Fedora under CC-BY-SA.
OR
= Explicit license =
1. A Fedora contributor makes translation changes and contributes their
changes to Fedora under a specific license (e.g. BSD, because that is what
upstream uses).
2. Fedora takes those contributions under the BSD license. (The FPCA
permits this, as long as the license is acceptable for Fedora, aka, a Free
license.)
3. The upstream can take the changes from Fedora under BSD.
Does that help?
Tom
On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 2:29 PM Ernestas Kulik <ekulik(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Hi,
I’m currently butting heads with the l10n team about licensing the
translations consumed in an upstream project. What needs to be clarified
here is the relationship between the upstream code license, Fedora CLA and
translator-submitted content.
https://docs.weblate.org/en/weblate-3.10/admin/licensing.html tells me
that Weblate is able to handle CLAs, so, in the event that the
translator-submitted content is bound by the Fedora CLA, should all
projects in the Weblate instance that currently use a “user license” (i.e.
software license) be changed accordingly?
Are translations in any way a derivative work? I would say translators
work in a clean-room environment with only the source string and,
optionally, context being provided. Does that matter at all here?
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