From: Tobias Peters <tpeters@...>
Date: 2002-07-03T01:31:59+09:00
Subject: RE: documentation licenses (was: eruby SAFE question)

Hi all,

My 2 cent:

Juergen is of course right insofar that the act of translation generates a
copyright on the translation. 

If, however, the OPL is a copyleft license (which I don't know, have to
read it first) in the sense that it restricts the licenses of derivative
works to be the OPL, then he has to license his translation under the OPL,
since the translated text is a derivative work.

Its the same as if you extend a GPL'd program -- of course you own the
copyright to your extensions, but you have to license them under the GPL
since you have included GPL'd code. 

In the case of translating a text, you just cannot separate your
extensions from the original work again as you could do with code.

I'm disappointed that this had to be debated in this form. Juergen has
actually done the community a service by translating the book into another
language. He may (or may not -- i still have to read the OPL myself) have
just misunderstood the OPL. 

If the OPL is not a copyleft license, then of course a license change
could be legal -- like Microsoft's license change when they incorporated
BSD code into windows NT.

Hope you can work this out

  Tobias