Hello Benno,
Thanks for your involvement; it definitely gets us closer to resolving
this question.
> I've hand-edited the PO files in latest/ so that at least the first
> header line speaks of gnulib. (These ancient PO files were apparently
> produced by msmerging against a coreutils or some other PO file.)
Thanks!
> > I'm CCing Benno, the TP coordinator. Benno, is there a way to guarantee that
> > the translations of gnulib-l10n.pot are under LGPLv2+ ?
>
> For updates and new submissions of PO files, I can make it so that
> the robot enforces that a certain line is present among the leading
> comment lines. I propose this line:
>
> # This file is published under the LGPLv2+ license.
>
> Would that do?
That does it nearly. I only have a problem with the word "publish". The
LGPL uses the word "distribute", e.g. in
0. This License Agreement applies to any software library or other
program which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder or
other authorized party saying it may be distributed under the terms of
this Lesser General Public License (also called "this License").
Each licensee is addressed as "you".
> But... maybe Bruno can do something in the POT file?
Yes, I'm exchanging the license notice line with nearly the one you
proposed; patch below.
> Maybe add an
> "X-License: LGPLv2+" or "PO-License: LGPLv2+" line, so that merged
> PO files will contain this line.
I think that, regardless how msgmerge behaves, it is better to not put
a license specification into the header entry, because
- The canonical place for the license notice is in the file's header, right
after the the copyright notice.
- If there were two license notices, one at the top of the file and one
in the header entry, there could be ambiguities.
> Would that be legally valid?
I can't really tell what is legally valid. But we should try to ensure
that translators don't feel "tricked" into something that they did not want.
That is, be as clear as possible with translators regarding the license of
their contributed PO file.
> As for the existing PO files... I cannot simply change the license
> line, even when it is incoherent.
But you could write mails to the translation teams, asking them to resubmit
with the license line replaced with
# This file is distributed under the LGPLv2+ license.
> > For translators who have sent a disclaimer to the FSF, this is probably a
> > non-issue, but what about the other translators?
>
> The gnulib domain requires a disclaimer, so all translators that
> have uploaded a PO file for gnulib have signed a disclaimer.
Ah, good to know. Does this make the current situation simpler?
> When the robot is forced to look for the above-mentioned license
> comment line, I can also make it so that the robot checks that
> the line "under the same license as the gnulib package" is _not_
> present.
Yes please!
Bruno
2025-01-02 Bruno Haible <br...@clisp.org>
gnulib-l10n: Clarify the license of the POT file.
Reported by Simon Josefsson. Suggested by Benno Schulenberg.
* po/Makefile ($(DOMAIN).pot): Replace the license notice line.
diff --git a/po/Makefile b/po/Makefile
index 26b6ad5b8e..bc2bf63b64 100644
--- a/po/Makefile
+++ b/po/Makefile
@@ -13,6 +13,13 @@ $(DOMAIN).pot: force
--msgid-bugs-address='$(MSGID_BUGS_ADDRESS)' \
$(XGETTEXT_OPTIONS) \
`cd .. && find lib '(' -name '*.c' -o -name '*.h' -o -name '*.y' ')'
| LC_ALL=C sort`
- mv $(DOMAIN).po $(DOMAIN).pot
+# We cannot use the usual comment
+# "This file is distributed under the same license as the GNU gnulib package."
+# here, because gnulib is not under a single license. Instead, use a comment
+# "This file is distributed under the LGPLv2+ license."
+# This comment is agreed-upon with the Translation Project.
+ sed -e 's/^# This file is distributed under the same license.*/# This
file is distributed under the LGPLv2+ license./' < $(DOMAIN).po > $(DOMAIN).po1
+ mv $(DOMAIN).po1 $(DOMAIN).pot
+ rm -f $(DOMAIN).po
force:
