[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[jrnieder at gmail dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder at gmail dot com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |jrnieder at gmail dot com

--- Comment #2 from Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder at gmail dot com> 2012-07-13 17:49:34 UTC ---
Work in progress is being tracked at
http://www.helgefjell.de/debianitem.php?name=bug555168

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[cjlhomeaddress at gmail dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress at gmail dot com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |cjlhomeaddress at gmail dot
                   |                            |com

--- Comment #3 from Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress at gmail dot com> 2012-07-13 20:41:05 UTC ---
As someone working on several new locales, it would help if you could provide
an example copyright line for the file header that would be considered "ideal".

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[tg at mirbsd dot de]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #4 from Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd dot de> 2012-07-13 20:48:02 UTC ---
As long as it’s not an explicit Public Domain (which is probably
illegal), much would be fine with me.

For example, something like this:

Copyright © 2010, 2011, 2012
→       Foo M. Bar <fbar@baz.org>

This locale information is available under any Open Source licence
approved by the OSI, at your choice.

(Possibly also all OKFN approved licences, if you feel like that.)

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[jrnieder at gmail dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #5 from Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder at gmail dot com> 2012-07-13 21:02:26 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #4)
> As long as it’s not an explicit Public Domain (which is probably
> illegal), much would be fine with me.

Heh, I was about to post the following:

| I'm fond of
|
|  % This file has been put in the public domain.
|  % You can do whatever you want with this file.
|  %
|  % Author: Chris Leonard
|
| Some[*] might object that under some systems of law, there is no such
| thing as putting a work in the public domain.  These people would be
| right.  Luckily the above wording makes the intent clear and
| unambiguous enough that reasonable courts recognize it as a license
| grant.
|
| [*] http://www.rosenlaw.com/lj16.htm
|     Rebuttal: http://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html
|
| If you want to dodge that issue, here's another reasonable way to go:
|
| % Copyright © 2012 Chris Leonard
| % License: Zlib <http://www.zlib.net/zlib_license.html>

Thorsten's "any OSI-approved license" is fine, too.  Even something
that requires reproducing a disclaimer of warranty like the LGPL, GPL,
Expat license, or a two-clause BSD-style license is fine, though it
seems silly for locale data.

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[tg at mirbsd dot de]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #6 from Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd dot de> 2012-07-13 21:10:39 UTC ---
Explicit PD alone is *not* enough, it's non-free: it lacks an explicit
copyright licence, and since the Berne Convention, all works are automatically
under copyright protection. Saying a work is PD isn't possible in all
jurisdictions.

If you absolutely must insist on PD, I really insist on you including a
paragraph similar to the following too:

.\" In countries where the Public Domain status of the work may not be
.\" valid, its primary author hereby grants a copyright licence to the
.\" general public to deal in the work without restriction and permis-
.\" sion to sublicence derivates under the terms of any (OSI approved)
.\" Open Source licence.

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[cjlhomeaddress at gmail dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #7 from Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress at gmail dot com> 2012-07-15 13:56:04 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #6)
> Explicit PD alone is *not* enough, it's non-free: it lacks an explicit
> copyright licence, and since the Berne Convention, all works are automatically
> under copyright protection. Saying a work is PD isn't possible in all
> jurisdictions.
> 
> If you absolutely must insist on PD, I really insist on you including a
> paragraph similar to the following too:
> 
> .\" In countries where the Public Domain status of the work may not be
> .\" valid, its primary author hereby grants a copyright licence to the
> .\" general public to deal in the work without restriction and permis-
> .\" sion to sublicence derivates under the terms of any (OSI approved)
> .\" Open Source licence.

If "Public Domain" like is a goal, is there any problem with CC-zero

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

or does CC-0 fail to overcome the absense of public domain status in certain
juridictions?

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[tg at mirbsd dot de]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #8 from Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd dot de> 2012-07-15 14:20:36 UTC ---
CC0 would be fine, but OSI has decided to not approve it at the moment.

People raised concerns about things like patent grants, and it was decided to
further discuss, especially as CC is in the process of working on the next
version of their other licences at the moment, and to revisit that later. (For
what it’s worth, I voted in favour of approving CC0.)

As long as only things like FSF and DFSG compatibility are a goal, that
shouldn’t stop you, but having OSI approval has, in the past, helped any sort
of licencing issue.

Now, I’d suggest https://www.mirbsd.org/MirOS-Licence.htm which *is* OSI
approved *and* FSF and DFSG compatible *and* can be used for code, data and any
other kind of copyrightable work. (Disclaimer: that’s mine, so I’m biased.
Although I’ve published criteria a lawyer-written copycenter-style licence must
fulfil for me to disrecommend this one in favour of the new one.)

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[jrnieder at gmail dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #9 from Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder at gmail dot com> 2012-07-15 16:00:40 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #7)
> If "Public Domain" like is a goal, is there any problem with CC-zero
>
> http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

These are matters of taste.  Practically speaking, any free software
license is probably line.  Any GPL-compatible license is certainly
fine.

I can't stop you, but CC-zero is a pain in the neck because its text
is very long. Is "Public Domain"-like your goal? Anyway, we've gone
off-topic for this bugtracker --- feel free to contact me and Thorsten
by email and cc some mailing list of your choice and we can guide you
through the process of choosing a license that matches your intent.

If you just want a default for locales in glibc, LGPL-2.1+ ("the license
of glibc") is probably what most people were assuming the locales already
had.  A license notice can look like this:

 % Copyright © 2012, Chris Leonard
 % This file is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 % it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License; either
 % version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[pasky at ucw dot cz]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

Petr Baudis <pasky at ucw dot cz> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |pasky at ucw dot cz

--- Comment #10 from Petr Baudis <pasky at ucw dot cz> 2012-07-15 18:13:01 UTC ---
I'm sorry, I didn't realize the presence of this bug earlier. We have made some
research regarding this on the mailing list some time ago and this is currently
the opinion of FSF on the matter:

  http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html

I.e., locale data is not copyrightable, therefore it cannot be covered by any
licence and that is also the reason we do not require copyright assignment
paperwork from the locale authors.

If you (e.g. Debian project) disagree, I encourage you to contact
copyright-clerk@fsf.org or SFLC for further discussions. For us developers,
this situation really is the best outcome since no paperwork is needed, I'd
say. My opinion is that the outcome of this bug should be removal of licence
notices (and "copyright" notices) from all localedata files to clear up any
possible confusion - comments?

(Which is something I'm not likely to engage myself with as my localedata TODO
backlog is sufficiently long already, but maybe it is important enough for some
downstream projects like Debian to contribute such a patch, if they share this
view?)

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[jrnieder at gmail dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #11 from Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder at gmail dot com> 2012-07-15 18:16:16 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #10)
> I'm sorry, I didn't realize the presence of this bug earlier. We have made
> some research regarding this on the mailing list some time ago and this is
> currently the opinion of FSF on the matter:
>
>   http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html
>
> I.e., locale data is not copyrightable, therefore it cannot be covered by any
> licence and that is also the reason we do not require copyright assignment
> paperwork from the locale authors.

I guess one approach would be to scrub all the comments out of these files
so all that is left is the locale data?

Though I wouldn't be too thrilled with that.

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[tg at mirbsd dot de]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #12 from Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd dot de> 2012-07-15 18:28:07 UTC ---
Indeed, the concern was raised in Debian (I stumbled upon it), so the SFLC/FSF
opinion is not enough to close this “as is”.

However, if the information from the mail you linked is correct, and the data
really consists only of uncopyrightable information, I personally (not speaking
for Debian) believe your way of resolving this (by removing the notices; I’d
notify the people involved though) is valid.

Jonathan, simply commenting the data does not necessarily add enough “work” to
fall under Copyright protection.

/me looks at
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=20;filename=wo_SN;att=1;bug=555168
for example, now

This example indeed looks uncopyrightable (but the notion of “being put into PD
by its author” is offensive). If the others are like this, I hope Debian will
accept the resolution that the problem is not in the inconsistent notices but
that there have been notices put on such data at all. (Note, IANAL, and I don’t
speak for the Debian glibc maintainers or ftpmasters or legal people.)

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[jrnieder at gmail dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #13 from Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder at gmail dot com> 2012-07-15 19:05:10 UTC ---
Hi Eben et al,

Petr Baudis wrote:

> I'm sorry, I didn't realize the presence of this bug earlier. We have made some
> research regarding this on the mailing list some time ago and this is currently
> the opinion of FSF on the matter:
>
>   http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html
>
> I.e., locale data is not copyrightable, therefore it cannot be covered by any
> licence and that is also the reason we do not require copyright assignment
> paperwork from the locale authors.
>
> If you (e.g. Debian project) disagree, I encourage you to contact
> copyright-clerk@fsf.org or SFLC for further discussions. For us developers,
> this situation really is the best outcome since no paperwork is needed, I'd
> say. My opinion is that the outcome of this bug should be removal of licence
> notices (and "copyright" notices) from all localedata files to clear up any
> possible confusion - comments?

Legal question for you.

Along with everything else it contains, the GNU C library provides a
collection of locale data.  Localedata files include basic information
about how programs should interact with users in a particular area:
currency symbols, paper size, which encoding to use for text files,
translations for "yes" and "no", and other details like that.  You can
find the glibc locales in the localedata/locales directory of glibc:

  http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=tree;f=localedata/locales

For example, the English locale for the United States is available
from the following address.

 
http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob_plain;f=localedata/locales/en_US

Since this is mostly factual information without much creative
content, no one paid much mind to its license.  Many locales permit
use, distribution, and commercial use without permitting modification:

    # Distribution and use is free, also for
    # commercial purposes.

Most notably, the POSIX locale contains that notice.  Some are more
philosophical:

    % Distribution and use is

Josh Triplett (cc-ed) noticed this in 2009 and reported it to the
Debian project[1].

We are concerned that although these files do not contain much
creative content, they do contain some, for example in their comments.
We are generally not lawyers and do not know what does and doesn't
fall under copyright protection in the United States and elsewhere.
It is important for it to be very clear to both us and our users what
their rights are.

Helge (cc-ed) has taken a survey of authors of locales with the notice
that doesn't permit modification to find what license terms they
intend.  Some findings:

 - many locale authors expected that, as part of glibc, these
   would have the same license as glibc (LGPL-2.1+)

 - they did not intend to forbid modification, and the notice was
   propagated from the POSIX locale by copy and paste.

 - when asked what terms they would like going forward for their work,
   most prefer "public domain", followed by LGPL and GPL.

You can find a summary of Helge's efforts at [2], and the actual
emails are at [1].

Unlike most of glibc, the FSF has not historically required copyright
assignment for these files.  Independently of the above investigation,
they were recently asked about and reaffirmed this position[3]:

    Well that was fast. The SFLC said that this type of thing isn't
copyrightable, and that 
    paperwork isn't really necessary. So we should be good to go. Thank you so
much for all your 
    help.

Questions:

 - Some locales (namely km_KH, lo_LA, th_TH, and uk_UA) contain
   copyright notices.  Are we legally permitted to remove the
   notices or to change them to say "Authors: ..."?

 - Suppose I wanted to add the text "You may freely use, modify,
   distribute, and relicense this file" to each of the locale data
   files, to make it completely clear that users are free to
   incorporate text from them into differently licensed works.  Would
   that be legally permissible?  Would it be accurate?  Is there any
   reason not to do it?

 - When locale authors have stated a preferred license, is there value
   in documenting that, or would it be counterproductive?

 - If the legal heir to some author of many locales wants to be really
   nasty, what is the worst they can do on the basis of this
   contribution?

Thanks in advance for looking this over.

Sincerely,
Jonathan

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/555168
[2] http://www.helgefjell.de/debianitem.php?name=bug555168
[3] http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[keld at keldix dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #14 from keld at keldix dot com <keld at keldix dot com> 2012-07-16 00:42:03 UTC ---
Hmm, I contributed a number of locales. I always assumed that there was a
copyright to each of them.
I do hold a masters in legislate law.

In my work, there was a considerable amount of labour. My initial work was
about 100 pages for
the POSIX standard 1003.2 back in 1993.  The expression was quite inventive at
the time (IMHO) 
and it had a number of facilities, such as being able to be run in many
character sets,
it was character set independent - which was a novelty then and interesting,
because
we has so many charsets then, and not almost just UTF8 as of today. It was 20
years ago!

Also the machinery had an elaborate set of character names that had had quite
some design
work for it to be mnemnoninc. The sorting was an innovative way of sorting
almost
all of the characters (in use at that time) which had never been done before.
There was quite some work in getting the data for each country and language,
and
also to get interested parties to agree on the data.
The system with locales and  charmaps and repertoiremaps itself was also quite
inventive.
And just getting it to compile was also some effort. 

But then I attached a licence to it that was not compatible with OSI
definitions.
I actually think the locales preceded the OSI defs in time. I wrongly thought
that I
should be a kind of maste editor of all of the data, this did not work out.

I am happy with what came out of it, and all the activity and involvement from
all over
the world on the glibc localedef data. I recently stated that all of the data I
have
contributed is released under GPL v2. I hope this solves some problems.

With my law background I think is is not fair to say the there is no
work height in the data. I don't care too much for my own work wrt. the
licences,
My aim was that the data and the work should be used, and also to maintain some
quality
to the work. The data should not become flawed. The current scheme with glibc
is a 
good way to ensure that - but I did not envisage that when I wrote the specs
and the license.

best regards
Keld


On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 07:05:10PM +0000, jrnieder at gmail dot com wrote:
> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213
> 
> --- Comment #13 from Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder at gmail dot com> 2012-07-15 19:05:10 UTC ---
> Hi Eben et al,
> 
> Petr Baudis wrote:
> 
> > I'm sorry, I didn't realize the presence of this bug earlier. We have made some
> > research regarding this on the mailing list some time ago and this is currently
> > the opinion of FSF on the matter:
> >
> >   http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html
> >
> > I.e., locale data is not copyrightable, therefore it cannot be covered by any
> > licence and that is also the reason we do not require copyright assignment
> > paperwork from the locale authors.
> >
> > If you (e.g. Debian project) disagree, I encourage you to contact
> > copyright-clerk@fsf.org or SFLC for further discussions. For us developers,
> > this situation really is the best outcome since no paperwork is needed, I'd
> > say. My opinion is that the outcome of this bug should be removal of licence
> > notices (and "copyright" notices) from all localedata files to clear up any
> > possible confusion - comments?
> 
> Legal question for you.
> 
> Along with everything else it contains, the GNU C library provides a
> collection of locale data.  Localedata files include basic information
> about how programs should interact with users in a particular area:
> currency symbols, paper size, which encoding to use for text files,
> translations for "yes" and "no", and other details like that.  You can
> find the glibc locales in the localedata/locales directory of glibc:
> 
>   http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=tree;f=localedata/locales
> 
> For example, the English locale for the United States is available
> from the following address.
> 
>  
> http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob_plain;f=localedata/locales/en_US
> 
> Since this is mostly factual information without much creative
> content, no one paid much mind to its license.  Many locales permit
> use, distribution, and commercial use without permitting modification:
> 
>     # Distribution and use is free, also for
>     # commercial purposes.
> 
> Most notably, the POSIX locale contains that notice.  Some are more
> philosophical:
> 
>     % Distribution and use is
> 
> Josh Triplett (cc-ed) noticed this in 2009 and reported it to the
> Debian project[1].
> 
> We are concerned that although these files do not contain much
> creative content, they do contain some, for example in their comments.
> We are generally not lawyers and do not know what does and doesn't
> fall under copyright protection in the United States and elsewhere.
> It is important for it to be very clear to both us and our users what
> their rights are.
> 
> Helge (cc-ed) has taken a survey of authors of locales with the notice
> that doesn't permit modification to find what license terms they
> intend.  Some findings:
> 
>  - many locale authors expected that, as part of glibc, these
>    would have the same license as glibc (LGPL-2.1+)
> 
>  - they did not intend to forbid modification, and the notice was
>    propagated from the POSIX locale by copy and paste.
> 
>  - when asked what terms they would like going forward for their work,
>    most prefer "public domain", followed by LGPL and GPL.
> 
> You can find a summary of Helge's efforts at [2], and the actual
> emails are at [1].
> 
> Unlike most of glibc, the FSF has not historically required copyright
> assignment for these files.  Independently of the above investigation,
> they were recently asked about and reaffirmed this position[3]:
> 
>     Well that was fast. The SFLC said that this type of thing isn't
> copyrightable, and that 
>     paperwork isn't really necessary. So we should be good to go. Thank you so
> much for all your 
>     help.
> 
> Questions:
> 
>  - Some locales (namely km_KH, lo_LA, th_TH, and uk_UA) contain
>    copyright notices.  Are we legally permitted to remove the
>    notices or to change them to say "Authors: ..."?
> 
>  - Suppose I wanted to add the text "You may freely use, modify,
>    distribute, and relicense this file" to each of the locale data
>    files, to make it completely clear that users are free to
>    incorporate text from them into differently licensed works.  Would
>    that be legally permissible?  Would it be accurate?  Is there any
>    reason not to do it?
> 
>  - When locale authors have stated a preferred license, is there value
>    in documenting that, or would it be counterproductive?
> 
>  - If the legal heir to some author of many locales wants to be really
>    nasty, what is the worst they can do on the basis of this
>    contribution?
> 
> Thanks in advance for looking this over.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Jonathan
> 
> [1] http://bugs.debian.org/555168
> [2] http://www.helgefjell.de/debianitem.php?name=bug555168
> [3] http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html
> 
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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[jrnieder at gmail dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #15 from Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder at gmail dot com> 2012-07-16 01:13:54 UTC ---
Hi Keld,

Keld Simonsen wrote[1]:

> Hmm, I contributed a number of locales. I always assumed that there was a
> copyright to each of them.
> I do hold a masters in legislate law.
[lots of helpful background snipped, including the intent of the
original notice]

Thanks much for this.  I'm cc-ing the SFLC since I'm not sure they
automatically receive mails to that bug tracker.

My guess is that the FSF's concerns that prompted the "this type of
thing isn't copyrightable" answer were USA-centric.  If I remember
correctly, in some jurisdictions outside the United States, the
eligibility of a work for copyright is based on the amount of work put
into it (as you remind me), while in the United States it's based on a
concept of creativity.

(For the curious: I personally would be happiest if the FSF would
continue not to care about these works' copyright while everyone else
would consider them as possibly copyrighted.  That way there is no
need for copyright assignment --- less paperwork! --- but there would
be no excuse not to follow the usual free software practice of
documenting the explicit permission grants the authors provide.)

Jonathan

[1] http://sourceware.org/PR11213#c14

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[keld at keldix dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #16 from keld at keldix dot com <keld at keldix dot com> 2012-07-16 08:56:10 UTC ---
On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 08:13:31PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Hi Keld,
> 
> Keld Simonsen wrote[1]:
> 
> > Hmm, I contributed a number of locales. I always assumed that there was a
> > copyright to each of them.
> > I do hold a masters in legislate law.
> [lots of helpful background snipped, including the intent of the
> original notice]
> 
> Thanks much for this.  I'm cc-ing the SFLC since I'm not sure they
> automatically receive mails to that bug tracker.
> 
> My guess is that the FSF's concerns that prompted the "this type of
> thing isn't copyrightable" answer were USA-centric.  If I remember
> correctly, in some jurisdictions outside the United States, the
> eligibility of a work for copyright is based on the amount of work put
> into it (as you remind me), while in the United States it's based on a
> concept of creativity.

I claim that there is a lot of creativity in how the locales are written, at
least
the big ones.  As said one of my intial works were 100 pages of the POSIX.2
standard.
And then the locales grew even further, with the advent of full ISO 10646
(Unicode)
coverage and ISO TR 14652 extra categories.  There is a lot of design and
ideas, 
and a lot of design criteria in the locales. Including a number of theoretical
landmarks,
and something that could have been patentetd, if somebody were inclined to do
such nasty things:-)
And IMHO that has resulted in a system that still has a number of advantages
over
what big players in the market have done for i18n. 

And then there is compilation copyright according to the Berne convention -
maybe you
don't hold copyright on the data, but you hold copyright on the presentation on
it and the
collection of the combination of the data.

I would say in juridical terms it would not be safe to assume that there is no
copyright on
the locales (and charmaps and repertoiremaps).

Best regards
keld

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[pasky at ucw dot cz]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #17 from Petr Baudis <pasky at ucw dot cz> 2012-07-16 11:44:25 UTC ---
Keld, I certainly agree that there is a lot of creativity in the way you
designed the locales specification. However, to me that would imply a copyright
on the specification and copyright on the implementation. Individual localedata
files that simply follow the pre-defined format and contain commonly known
facts seem to be a different matter to me?

The compilation copyright seems like a more serious issue.

(Anyhow, I'm not a lawyer so this is an argument I don't want to get into. I'm
looking to a statement from someone at FSF/SFLC.)

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[tg at mirbsd dot de]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #18 from Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd dot de> 2012-07-16 13:13:31 UTC ---
Keld, while you may have had a lot of “sweat of brow”, in the end, the locale
data (in the one file I looked at) is mere fact, and there is, basically, only
one way to express such facts using the format glibc expects. This is, at
least, under the EU interoperability directive, not copyrightable (neither are
*.h files, unless they include insane amounts of inline functions, by the way).
As for the USA, you probably know that better than I do, but the work, while it
may have cost you a lot of creativity, is mostly “sweat of brow”, to express
the fact that way. You may have designed the interface, the character naming
convention, etc. but these are interfaces, not works in the sense of copyright.
I really do not want you to lose any attribution of that, but I don’t believe
the (one file I looked at with) locale information as shown is not
copyrightable.

“something that could have been patentetd”[sic] is of different scope than
copyright relevant work. I also fear you could probably have patented it, but
not put it under copyright protection. (Jonathan, mere effort is also not
enough in Germany, although USA’s “sweat of brow” doctrine is a tad stronger.
Still, we’re facing interoperability interfaces here, and mere fact; the
currency of the USA is the Dollar, no matter what.)

The presentation and combination of the data may, may, be affected by copyright
or even database law, true. I guess SFLC and, if possible, international
lawyers could have a look at that.

I laud your attempt to keep quality, but IMHO, using legal matters for that is
not the way to go. You could run a “locale data repository”, from which e.g.
glibc could then pull, for that, like tzdata.

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[keld at keldix dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #19 from keld at keldix dot com <keld at keldix dot com> 2012-07-16 16:38:28 UTC ---
On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 11:44:25AM +0000, pasky at ucw dot cz wrote:
> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213
> 
> --- Comment #17 from Petr Baudis <pasky at ucw dot cz> 2012-07-16 11:44:25 UTC ---
> Keld, I certainly agree that there is a lot of creativity in the way you
> designed the locales specification. However, to me that would imply a copyright
> on the specification and copyright on the implementation. Individual localedata
> files that simply follow the pre-defined format and contain commonly known
> facts seem to be a different matter to me?
> 
> The compilation copyright seems like a more serious issue.
> 
> (Anyhow, I'm not a lawyer so this is an argument I don't want to get into. I'm
> looking to a statement from someone at FSF/SFLC.)

I did not create the original POSIX specification of locale and charmap
formats,
one of the main people behind that was Gary Miller, and for the sorting Greger
Leijonhufvud. 
I was the main contributor for the ISO TR 14652 extensions. 

Anyway what I wrote for POSIX.2 was the localedata - not the specification of
the formats.
This was what later became the da_DK and the i18n locales - that is pure
localedata data.
And there was a lot of design and creativity in that. So it is not just the
design 
that has work height - also the *data* has.

Then filling in data in the locale format - how much work height is there in
that?
I don't know. I think it may be that same problem of how much creativity there
is in
providing patches in general to OSS. Is it just a spelling creation? Or what?
I once provided a patch of just 1 line to the Linux kernel. It took quite some
research and
some imagnation how to do it and development of new of theory,
and I probably could have patented that mechanism.
In some cases that patch could speed up performance with 50 %
So you cannot judge work height by the size of the contribution.

best regards
keld

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[keld at keldix dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #20 from keld at keldix dot com <keld at keldix dot com> 2012-07-16 17:04:02 UTC ---
On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 01:13:31PM +0000, tg at mirbsd dot de wrote:
> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213
> 
> --- Comment #18 from Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd dot de> 2012-07-16 13:13:31 UTC ---
> Keld, while you may have had a lot of ???sweat of brow???, in the end, the locale
> data (in the one file I looked at) is mere fact, and there is, basically, only
> one way to express such facts using the format glibc expects.

Yes, some of the locales are stright forward. But if you look at the whole
combination of a locale, with the LC_COLLATE, the LC_CTYPE, and the
transliteration
specs, there is not only sweat in it but a lot of decisions.
Even the LC_MESSAGES data for yes and no contains a number of variations to
consider.
And even the LC_TIME has some tricks. The choices is a common subject we talk
about on the
localedata reflector, because there are different ways of doing a lot of
things in the locale data. And when there is choice, there is creativity
and work height.

> This is, at
> least, under the EU interoperability directive, not copyrightable (neither are
> *.h files, unless they include insane amounts of inline functions, by the way).
> As for the USA, you probably know that better than I do, but the work, while it
> may have cost you a lot of creativity, is mostly ???sweat of brow???, to express
> the fact that way. You may have designed the interface, the character naming
> convention, etc. but these are interfaces, not works in the sense of copyright.
> I really do not want you to lose any attribution of that, but I don???t believe
> the (one file I looked at with) locale information as shown is not
> copyrightable.

(maybe too many negations here - but I think I know what you mean.)
I think there is differences of what level of work height that is needed for it
to be 
copyrightable in different countries. but I would be astonished if say 1000
lines of
data with a number of serious design decisions on the solutions did not
enjoy copyright in any country (under the Berne convention)..


I do think locales per se are works. They are freestanding items, that are
supposed then to
work toghether with other parts to make a functioning system.

> ???something that could have been patentetd???[sic] is of different scope than
> copyright relevant work. I also fear you could probably have patented it, but
> not put it under copyright protection. (Jonathan, mere effort is also not
> enough in Germany, although USA???s ???sweat of brow??? doctrine is a tad stronger.
> Still, we???re facing interoperability interfaces here, and mere fact; the
> currency of the USA is the Dollar, no matter what.)

:-)

best regards
keld

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[cjlhomeaddress at gmail dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #21 from Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress at gmail dot com> 2012-07-16 18:22:04 UTC ---
I think there is something to the analogy that "glibc locale" is to "glibc" as
"PO file" is to "YOUR_PACKAGE_NAME_HERE".  Similar purposes are served in both
cases, with specific, properly-formatted information being supplied by the
localizer to allow usage of (in this case glibc) in their language.

The common licensing / copyright header lines in a PO file are:

# SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
# Copyright (C) YEAR OF THE PACKAGE'S COPYRIGHT HOLDER
# This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package.
# FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.

This is certainly most localizers expectation of how their work will be
licensed and they will credited, it stands to reason that glibc locale
developers will have similar expectations, but that is merely opinion and not
in any way a legal argument.

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[help at softwarefreedom dot org]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #22 from help at softwarefreedom dot org 2012-07-16 18:49:21 UTC ---
On 07/15/2012 09:13 PM, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Hi Keld,
> 
> Keld Simonsen wrote[1]:
> 
>> Hmm, I contributed a number of locales. I always assumed that there was a
>> copyright to each of them.
>> I do hold a masters in legislate law.
> [lots of helpful background snipped, including the intent of the
> original notice]
> 
> Thanks much for this.  I'm cc-ing the SFLC since I'm not sure they
> automatically receive mails to that bug tracker.
> 
> My guess is that the FSF's concerns that prompted the "this type of
> thing isn't copyrightable" answer were USA-centric.  If I remember
> correctly, in some jurisdictions outside the United States, the
> eligibility of a work for copyright is based on the amount of work put
> into it (as you remind me), while in the United States it's based on a
> concept of creativity.
> 
> (For the curious: I personally would be happiest if the FSF would
> continue not to care about these works' copyright while everyone else
> would consider them as possibly copyrighted.  That way there is no
> need for copyright assignment --- less paperwork! --- but there would
> be no excuse not to follow the usual free software practice of
> documenting the explicit permission grants the authors provide.)
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> [1] http://sourceware.org/PR11213#c14


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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[help at softwarefreedom dot org]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #22 from help at softwarefreedom dot org 2012-07-16 18:49:21 UTC ---
On 07/15/2012 09:13 PM, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Hi Keld,
> 
> Keld Simonsen wrote[1]:
> 
>> Hmm, I contributed a number of locales. I always assumed that there was a
>> copyright to each of them.
>> I do hold a masters in legislate law.
> [lots of helpful background snipped, including the intent of the
> original notice]
> 
> Thanks much for this.  I'm cc-ing the SFLC since I'm not sure they
> automatically receive mails to that bug tracker.
> 
> My guess is that the FSF's concerns that prompted the "this type of
> thing isn't copyrightable" answer were USA-centric.  If I remember
> correctly, in some jurisdictions outside the United States, the
> eligibility of a work for copyright is based on the amount of work put
> into it (as you remind me), while in the United States it's based on a
> concept of creativity.
> 
> (For the curious: I personally would be happiest if the FSF would
> continue not to care about these works' copyright while everyone else
> would consider them as possibly copyrighted.  That way there is no
> need for copyright assignment --- less paperwork! --- but there would
> be no excuse not to follow the usual free software practice of
> documenting the explicit permission grants the authors provide.)
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> [1] http://sourceware.org/PR11213#c14


The Software Freedom Law Center has received an email from you sent to
help@softwarefreedom.org.  We look forward to helping you in any way we
can, but before we can do that we need to make sure that you understand
that your email to us does not create an attorney-client relationship
with us and any information you send us will not be considered
confidential or privileged.  If you understand that, just reply to this
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--- Comment #23 from help at softwarefreedom dot org 2012-07-16 18:50:21 UTC ---
On 07/15/2012 03:04 PM, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Hi Eben et al,
> 
> Petr Baudis wrote:
> 
>> I'm sorry, I didn't realize the presence of this bug earlier. We have made some
>> research regarding this on the mailing list some time ago and this is currently
>> the opinion of FSF on the matter:
>>
>>   http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html
>>
>> I.e., locale data is not copyrightable, therefore it cannot be covered by any
>> licence and that is also the reason we do not require copyright assignment
>> paperwork from the locale authors.
>>
>> If you (e.g. Debian project) disagree, I encourage you to contact
>> copyright-clerk@fsf.org or SFLC for further discussions. For us developers,
>> this situation really is the best outcome since no paperwork is needed, I'd
>> say. My opinion is that the outcome of this bug should be removal of licence
>> notices (and "copyright" notices) from all localedata files to clear up any
>> possible confusion - comments?
> 
> Legal question for you.
> 
> Along with everything else it contains, the GNU C library provides a
> collection of locale data.  Localedata files include basic information
> about how programs should interact with users in a particular area:
> currency symbols, paper size, which encoding to use for text files,
> translations for "yes" and "no", and other details like that.  You can
> find the glibc locales in the localedata/locales directory of glibc:
> 
>   http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=tree;f=localedata/locales
> 
> For example, the English locale for the United States is available
> from the following address.
> 
>   http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob_plain;f=localedata/locales/en_US
> 
> Since this is mostly factual information without much creative
> content, no one paid much mind to its license.  Many locales permit
> use, distribution, and commercial use without permitting modification:
> 
> 	# Distribution and use is free, also for
> 	# commercial purposes.
> 
> Most notably, the POSIX locale contains that notice.  Some are more
> philosophical:
> 
> 	% Distribution and use is
> 
> Josh Triplett (cc-ed) noticed this in 2009 and reported it to the
> Debian project[1].
> 
> We are concerned that although these files do not contain much
> creative content, they do contain some, for example in their comments.
> We are generally not lawyers and do not know what does and doesn't
> fall under copyright protection in the United States and elsewhere.
> It is important for it to be very clear to both us and our users what
> their rights are.
> 
> Helge (cc-ed) has taken a survey of authors of locales with the notice
> that doesn't permit modification to find what license terms they
> intend.  Some findings:
> 
>  - many locale authors expected that, as part of glibc, these
>    would have the same license as glibc (LGPL-2.1+)
> 
>  - they did not intend to forbid modification, and the notice was
>    propagated from the POSIX locale by copy and paste.
> 
>  - when asked what terms they would like going forward for their work,
>    most prefer "public domain", followed by LGPL and GPL.
> 
> You can find a summary of Helge's efforts at [2], and the actual
> emails are at [1].
> 
> Unlike most of glibc, the FSF has not historically required copyright
> assignment for these files.  Independently of the above investigation,
> they were recently asked about and reaffirmed this position[3]:
> 
> 	Well that was fast. The SFLC said that this type of thing isn't copyrightable, and that 
> 	paperwork isn't really necessary. So we should be good to go. Thank you so much for all your 
> 	help.
> 
> Questions:
> 
>  - Some locales (namely km_KH, lo_LA, th_TH, and uk_UA) contain
>    copyright notices.  Are we legally permitted to remove the
>    notices or to change them to say "Authors: ..."?
> 
>  - Suppose I wanted to add the text "You may freely use, modify,
>    distribute, and relicense this file" to each of the locale data
>    files, to make it completely clear that users are free to
>    incorporate text from them into differently licensed works.  Would
>    that be legally permissible?  Would it be accurate?  Is there any
>    reason not to do it?
> 
>  - When locale authors have stated a preferred license, is there value
>    in documenting that, or would it be counterproductive?
> 
>  - If the legal heir to some author of many locales wants to be really
>    nasty, what is the worst they can do on the basis of this
>    contribution?
> 
> Thanks in advance for looking this over.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Jonathan
> 
> [1] http://bugs.debian.org/555168
> [2] http://www.helgefjell.de/debianitem.php?name=bug555168
> [3] http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html

The Software Freedom Law Center has received an email from you sent to
help@softwarefreedom.org.  We look forward to helping you in any way we
can, but before we can do that we need to make sure that you understand
that your email to us does not create an attorney-client relationship
with us and any information you send us will not be considered
confidential or privileged.  If you understand that, just reply to this
message by keeping the text of this paragraph and adding "Understood"
and we will respond to your email shortly.  However, if your message
contains any information that you would like to be considered
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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[help at softwarefreedom dot org]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #23 from help at softwarefreedom dot org 2012-07-16 18:50:21 UTC ---
On 07/15/2012 03:04 PM, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Hi Eben et al,
> 
> Petr Baudis wrote:
> 
>> I'm sorry, I didn't realize the presence of this bug earlier. We have made some
>> research regarding this on the mailing list some time ago and this is currently
>> the opinion of FSF on the matter:
>>
>>   http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html
>>
>> I.e., locale data is not copyrightable, therefore it cannot be covered by any
>> licence and that is also the reason we do not require copyright assignment
>> paperwork from the locale authors.
>>
>> If you (e.g. Debian project) disagree, I encourage you to contact
>> copyright-clerk@fsf.org or SFLC for further discussions. For us developers,
>> this situation really is the best outcome since no paperwork is needed, I'd
>> say. My opinion is that the outcome of this bug should be removal of licence
>> notices (and "copyright" notices) from all localedata files to clear up any
>> possible confusion - comments?
> 
> Legal question for you.
> 
> Along with everything else it contains, the GNU C library provides a
> collection of locale data.  Localedata files include basic information
> about how programs should interact with users in a particular area:
> currency symbols, paper size, which encoding to use for text files,
> translations for "yes" and "no", and other details like that.  You can
> find the glibc locales in the localedata/locales directory of glibc:
> 
>   http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=tree;f=localedata/locales
> 
> For example, the English locale for the United States is available
> from the following address.
> 
>   http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob_plain;f=localedata/locales/en_US
> 
> Since this is mostly factual information without much creative
> content, no one paid much mind to its license.  Many locales permit
> use, distribution, and commercial use without permitting modification:
> 
> 	# Distribution and use is free, also for
> 	# commercial purposes.
> 
> Most notably, the POSIX locale contains that notice.  Some are more
> philosophical:
> 
> 	% Distribution and use is
> 
> Josh Triplett (cc-ed) noticed this in 2009 and reported it to the
> Debian project[1].
> 
> We are concerned that although these files do not contain much
> creative content, they do contain some, for example in their comments.
> We are generally not lawyers and do not know what does and doesn't
> fall under copyright protection in the United States and elsewhere.
> It is important for it to be very clear to both us and our users what
> their rights are.
> 
> Helge (cc-ed) has taken a survey of authors of locales with the notice
> that doesn't permit modification to find what license terms they
> intend.  Some findings:
> 
>  - many locale authors expected that, as part of glibc, these
>    would have the same license as glibc (LGPL-2.1+)
> 
>  - they did not intend to forbid modification, and the notice was
>    propagated from the POSIX locale by copy and paste.
> 
>  - when asked what terms they would like going forward for their work,
>    most prefer "public domain", followed by LGPL and GPL.
> 
> You can find a summary of Helge's efforts at [2], and the actual
> emails are at [1].
> 
> Unlike most of glibc, the FSF has not historically required copyright
> assignment for these files.  Independently of the above investigation,
> they were recently asked about and reaffirmed this position[3]:
> 
> 	Well that was fast. The SFLC said that this type of thing isn't copyrightable, and that 
> 	paperwork isn't really necessary. So we should be good to go. Thank you so much for all your 
> 	help.
> 
> Questions:
> 
>  - Some locales (namely km_KH, lo_LA, th_TH, and uk_UA) contain
>    copyright notices.  Are we legally permitted to remove the
>    notices or to change them to say "Authors: ..."?
> 
>  - Suppose I wanted to add the text "You may freely use, modify,
>    distribute, and relicense this file" to each of the locale data
>    files, to make it completely clear that users are free to
>    incorporate text from them into differently licensed works.  Would
>    that be legally permissible?  Would it be accurate?  Is there any
>    reason not to do it?
> 
>  - When locale authors have stated a preferred license, is there value
>    in documenting that, or would it be counterproductive?
> 
>  - If the legal heir to some author of many locales wants to be really
>    nasty, what is the worst they can do on the basis of this
>    contribution?
> 
> Thanks in advance for looking this over.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Jonathan
> 
> [1] http://bugs.debian.org/555168
> [2] http://www.helgefjell.de/debianitem.php?name=bug555168
> [3] http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html

The Software Freedom Law Center has received an email from you sent to
help@softwarefreedom.org.  We look forward to helping you in any way we
can, but before we can do that we need to make sure that you understand
that your email to us does not create an attorney-client relationship
with us and any information you send us will not be considered
confidential or privileged.  If you understand that, just reply to this
message by keeping the text of this paragraph and adding "Understood"
and we will respond to your email shortly.  However, if your message
contains any information that you would like to be considered
confidential or privileged (in other words, you do not want it to be
considered public information), please respond to this message with
"Delete my message" or just "Delete."  We understand that this procedure
may seem burdensome, but it is required by law in order to ensure your
rights and the rights of our clients are protected.

--- Comment #24 from help at softwarefreedom dot org 2012-07-16 18:50:27 UTC ---
On 07/16/2012 04:55 AM, Keld Simonsen wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 08:13:31PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
>> Hi Keld,
>>
>> Keld Simonsen wrote[1]:
>>
>>> Hmm, I contributed a number of locales. I always assumed that there was a
>>> copyright to each of them.
>>> I do hold a masters in legislate law.
>> [lots of helpful background snipped, including the intent of the
>> original notice]
>>
>> Thanks much for this.  I'm cc-ing the SFLC since I'm not sure they
>> automatically receive mails to that bug tracker.
>>
>> My guess is that the FSF's concerns that prompted the "this type of
>> thing isn't copyrightable" answer were USA-centric.  If I remember
>> correctly, in some jurisdictions outside the United States, the
>> eligibility of a work for copyright is based on the amount of work put
>> into it (as you remind me), while in the United States it's based on a
>> concept of creativity.
> 
> I claim that there is a lot of creativity in how the locales are written, at least
> the big ones.  As said one of my intial works were 100 pages of the POSIX.2 standard.
> And then the locales grew even further, with the advent of full ISO 10646 (Unicode)
> coverage and ISO TR 14652 extra categories.  There is a lot of design and ideas, 
> and a lot of design criteria in the locales. Including a number of theoretical landmarks,
> and something that could have been patentetd, if somebody were inclined to do such nasty things:-)
> And IMHO that has resulted in a system that still has a number of advantages over
> what big players in the market have done for i18n. 
> 
> And then there is compilation copyright according to the Berne convention - maybe you
> don't hold copyright on the data, but you hold copyright on the presentation on it and the
> collection of the combination of the data.
> 
> I would say in juridical terms it would not be safe to assume that there is no copyright on
> the locales (and charmaps and repertoiremaps).
> 
> Best regards
> keld


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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[help at softwarefreedom dot org]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #22 from help at softwarefreedom dot org 2012-07-16 18:49:21 UTC ---
On 07/15/2012 09:13 PM, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Hi Keld,
> 
> Keld Simonsen wrote[1]:
> 
>> Hmm, I contributed a number of locales. I always assumed that there was a
>> copyright to each of them.
>> I do hold a masters in legislate law.
> [lots of helpful background snipped, including the intent of the
> original notice]
> 
> Thanks much for this.  I'm cc-ing the SFLC since I'm not sure they
> automatically receive mails to that bug tracker.
> 
> My guess is that the FSF's concerns that prompted the "this type of
> thing isn't copyrightable" answer were USA-centric.  If I remember
> correctly, in some jurisdictions outside the United States, the
> eligibility of a work for copyright is based on the amount of work put
> into it (as you remind me), while in the United States it's based on a
> concept of creativity.
> 
> (For the curious: I personally would be happiest if the FSF would
> continue not to care about these works' copyright while everyone else
> would consider them as possibly copyrighted.  That way there is no
> need for copyright assignment --- less paperwork! --- but there would
> be no excuse not to follow the usual free software practice of
> documenting the explicit permission grants the authors provide.)
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> [1] http://sourceware.org/PR11213#c14


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--- Comment #23 from help at softwarefreedom dot org 2012-07-16 18:50:21 UTC ---
On 07/15/2012 03:04 PM, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Hi Eben et al,
> 
> Petr Baudis wrote:
> 
>> I'm sorry, I didn't realize the presence of this bug earlier. We have made some
>> research regarding this on the mailing list some time ago and this is currently
>> the opinion of FSF on the matter:
>>
>>   http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html
>>
>> I.e., locale data is not copyrightable, therefore it cannot be covered by any
>> licence and that is also the reason we do not require copyright assignment
>> paperwork from the locale authors.
>>
>> If you (e.g. Debian project) disagree, I encourage you to contact
>> copyright-clerk@fsf.org or SFLC for further discussions. For us developers,
>> this situation really is the best outcome since no paperwork is needed, I'd
>> say. My opinion is that the outcome of this bug should be removal of licence
>> notices (and "copyright" notices) from all localedata files to clear up any
>> possible confusion - comments?
> 
> Legal question for you.
> 
> Along with everything else it contains, the GNU C library provides a
> collection of locale data.  Localedata files include basic information
> about how programs should interact with users in a particular area:
> currency symbols, paper size, which encoding to use for text files,
> translations for "yes" and "no", and other details like that.  You can
> find the glibc locales in the localedata/locales directory of glibc:
> 
>   http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=tree;f=localedata/locales
> 
> For example, the English locale for the United States is available
> from the following address.
> 
>   http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob_plain;f=localedata/locales/en_US
> 
> Since this is mostly factual information without much creative
> content, no one paid much mind to its license.  Many locales permit
> use, distribution, and commercial use without permitting modification:
> 
> 	# Distribution and use is free, also for
> 	# commercial purposes.
> 
> Most notably, the POSIX locale contains that notice.  Some are more
> philosophical:
> 
> 	% Distribution and use is
> 
> Josh Triplett (cc-ed) noticed this in 2009 and reported it to the
> Debian project[1].
> 
> We are concerned that although these files do not contain much
> creative content, they do contain some, for example in their comments.
> We are generally not lawyers and do not know what does and doesn't
> fall under copyright protection in the United States and elsewhere.
> It is important for it to be very clear to both us and our users what
> their rights are.
> 
> Helge (cc-ed) has taken a survey of authors of locales with the notice
> that doesn't permit modification to find what license terms they
> intend.  Some findings:
> 
>  - many locale authors expected that, as part of glibc, these
>    would have the same license as glibc (LGPL-2.1+)
> 
>  - they did not intend to forbid modification, and the notice was
>    propagated from the POSIX locale by copy and paste.
> 
>  - when asked what terms they would like going forward for their work,
>    most prefer "public domain", followed by LGPL and GPL.
> 
> You can find a summary of Helge's efforts at [2], and the actual
> emails are at [1].
> 
> Unlike most of glibc, the FSF has not historically required copyright
> assignment for these files.  Independently of the above investigation,
> they were recently asked about and reaffirmed this position[3]:
> 
> 	Well that was fast. The SFLC said that this type of thing isn't copyrightable, and that 
> 	paperwork isn't really necessary. So we should be good to go. Thank you so much for all your 
> 	help.
> 
> Questions:
> 
>  - Some locales (namely km_KH, lo_LA, th_TH, and uk_UA) contain
>    copyright notices.  Are we legally permitted to remove the
>    notices or to change them to say "Authors: ..."?
> 
>  - Suppose I wanted to add the text "You may freely use, modify,
>    distribute, and relicense this file" to each of the locale data
>    files, to make it completely clear that users are free to
>    incorporate text from them into differently licensed works.  Would
>    that be legally permissible?  Would it be accurate?  Is there any
>    reason not to do it?
> 
>  - When locale authors have stated a preferred license, is there value
>    in documenting that, or would it be counterproductive?
> 
>  - If the legal heir to some author of many locales wants to be really
>    nasty, what is the worst they can do on the basis of this
>    contribution?
> 
> Thanks in advance for looking this over.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Jonathan
> 
> [1] http://bugs.debian.org/555168
> [2] http://www.helgefjell.de/debianitem.php?name=bug555168
> [3] http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-locales/2012-q2/msg00136.html

The Software Freedom Law Center has received an email from you sent to
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--- Comment #24 from help at softwarefreedom dot org 2012-07-16 18:50:27 UTC ---
On 07/16/2012 04:55 AM, Keld Simonsen wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 08:13:31PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
>> Hi Keld,
>>
>> Keld Simonsen wrote[1]:
>>
>>> Hmm, I contributed a number of locales. I always assumed that there was a
>>> copyright to each of them.
>>> I do hold a masters in legislate law.
>> [lots of helpful background snipped, including the intent of the
>> original notice]
>>
>> Thanks much for this.  I'm cc-ing the SFLC since I'm not sure they
>> automatically receive mails to that bug tracker.
>>
>> My guess is that the FSF's concerns that prompted the "this type of
>> thing isn't copyrightable" answer were USA-centric.  If I remember
>> correctly, in some jurisdictions outside the United States, the
>> eligibility of a work for copyright is based on the amount of work put
>> into it (as you remind me), while in the United States it's based on a
>> concept of creativity.
> 
> I claim that there is a lot of creativity in how the locales are written, at least
> the big ones.  As said one of my intial works were 100 pages of the POSIX.2 standard.
> And then the locales grew even further, with the advent of full ISO 10646 (Unicode)
> coverage and ISO TR 14652 extra categories.  There is a lot of design and ideas, 
> and a lot of design criteria in the locales. Including a number of theoretical landmarks,
> and something that could have been patentetd, if somebody were inclined to do such nasty things:-)
> And IMHO that has resulted in a system that still has a number of advantages over
> what big players in the market have done for i18n. 
> 
> And then there is compilation copyright according to the Berne convention - maybe you
> don't hold copyright on the data, but you hold copyright on the presentation on it and the
> collection of the combination of the data.
> 
> I would say in juridical terms it would not be safe to assume that there is no copyright on
> the locales (and charmaps and repertoiremaps).
> 
> Best regards
> keld


The Software Freedom Law Center has received an email from you sent to
help@softwarefreedom.org.  We look forward to helping you in any way we
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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[help at softwarefreedom dot org]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #24 from help at softwarefreedom dot org 2012-07-16 18:50:27 UTC ---
On 07/16/2012 04:55 AM, Keld Simonsen wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 08:13:31PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
>> Hi Keld,
>>
>> Keld Simonsen wrote[1]:
>>
>>> Hmm, I contributed a number of locales. I always assumed that there was a
>>> copyright to each of them.
>>> I do hold a masters in legislate law.
>> [lots of helpful background snipped, including the intent of the
>> original notice]
>>
>> Thanks much for this.  I'm cc-ing the SFLC since I'm not sure they
>> automatically receive mails to that bug tracker.
>>
>> My guess is that the FSF's concerns that prompted the "this type of
>> thing isn't copyrightable" answer were USA-centric.  If I remember
>> correctly, in some jurisdictions outside the United States, the
>> eligibility of a work for copyright is based on the amount of work put
>> into it (as you remind me), while in the United States it's based on a
>> concept of creativity.
> 
> I claim that there is a lot of creativity in how the locales are written, at least
> the big ones.  As said one of my intial works were 100 pages of the POSIX.2 standard.
> And then the locales grew even further, with the advent of full ISO 10646 (Unicode)
> coverage and ISO TR 14652 extra categories.  There is a lot of design and ideas, 
> and a lot of design criteria in the locales. Including a number of theoretical landmarks,
> and something that could have been patentetd, if somebody were inclined to do such nasty things:-)
> And IMHO that has resulted in a system that still has a number of advantages over
> what big players in the market have done for i18n. 
> 
> And then there is compilation copyright according to the Berne convention - maybe you
> don't hold copyright on the data, but you hold copyright on the presentation on it and the
> collection of the combination of the data.
> 
> I would say in juridical terms it would not be safe to assume that there is no copyright on
> the locales (and charmaps and repertoiremaps).
> 
> Best regards
> keld


The Software Freedom Law Center has received an email from you sent to
help@softwarefreedom.org.  We look forward to helping you in any way we
can, but before we can do that we need to make sure that you understand
that your email to us does not create an attorney-client relationship
with us and any information you send us will not be considered
confidential or privileged.  If you understand that, just reply to this
message by keeping the text of this paragraph and adding "Understood"
and we will respond to your email shortly.  However, if your message
contains any information that you would like to be considered
confidential or privileged (in other words, you do not want it to be
considered public information), please respond to this message with
"Delete my message" or just "Delete."  We understand that this procedure
may seem burdensome, but it is required by law in order to ensure your
rights and the rights of our clients are protected.

--- Comment #25 from help at softwarefreedom dot org 2012-07-16 18:51:49 UTC ---
On 07/16/2012 04:55 AM, Keld Simonsen wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 08:13:31PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
>> Hi Keld,
>>
>> Keld Simonsen wrote[1]:
>>
>>> Hmm, I contributed a number of locales. I always assumed that there was a
>>> copyright to each of them.
>>> I do hold a masters in legislate law.
>> [lots of helpful background snipped, including the intent of the
>> original notice]
>>
>> Thanks much for this.  I'm cc-ing the SFLC since I'm not sure they
>> automatically receive mails to that bug tracker.
>>
>> My guess is that the FSF's concerns that prompted the "this type of
>> thing isn't copyrightable" answer were USA-centric.  If I remember
>> correctly, in some jurisdictions outside the United States, the
>> eligibility of a work for copyright is based on the amount of work put
>> into it (as you remind me), while in the United States it's based on a
>> concept of creativity.
> 
> I claim that there is a lot of creativity in how the locales are written, at least
> the big ones.  As said one of my intial works were 100 pages of the POSIX.2 standard.
> And then the locales grew even further, with the advent of full ISO 10646 (Unicode)
> coverage and ISO TR 14652 extra categories.  There is a lot of design and ideas, 
> and a lot of design criteria in the locales. Including a number of theoretical landmarks,
> and something that could have been patentetd, if somebody were inclined to do such nasty things:-)
> And IMHO that has resulted in a system that still has a number of advantages over
> what big players in the market have done for i18n. 
> 
> And then there is compilation copyright according to the Berne convention - maybe you
> don't hold copyright on the data, but you hold copyright on the presentation on it and the
> collection of the combination of the data.
> 
> I would say in juridical terms it would not be safe to assume that there is no copyright on
> the locales (and charmaps and repertoiremaps).
> 
> Best regards
> keld


The Software Freedom Law Center has received an email from you sent to
help@softwarefreedom.org.  We look forward to helping you in any way we
can, but before we can do that we need to make sure that you understand
that your email to us does not create an attorney-client relationship
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confidential or privileged.  If you understand that, just reply to this
message by keeping the text of this paragraph and adding "Understood"
and we will respond to your email shortly.  However, if your message
contains any information that you would like to be considered
confidential or privileged (in other words, you do not want it to be
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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[jrnieder at gmail dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #26 from Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder at gmail dot com> 2012-07-17 15:07:41 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #17)
> (Anyhow, I'm not a lawyer so this is an argument I don't want to get into. I'm
> looking to a statement from someone at FSF/SFLC.)

I've asked the Debian Project Leader to make a formal request for advice,
since that seems to be how the SFLC would prefer this to go.  Bureaucracy...

Oh well.  I look forward to hints from the legal folk, too.

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[cjlhomeaddress at gmail dot com]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #27 from Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress at gmail dot com> 2012-07-25 17:50:11 UTC ---
I've had the opportunity to bring this to the attention of the GNOME Technical
Advisory Board (via a member I know).  I do think this is a serious matter and
requires high-level attention to drive resolution as quickly as feasible.

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[fweimer at redhat dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

Florian Weimer <fweimer at redhat dot com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |fweimer at redhat dot com
              Flags|                            |security-

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[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[drepper at redhat dot com]

------- Additional Comments From drepper at redhat dot com  2010-04-04 18:30 -------
I'm not going to do any of that.  The licenses are all fine with me.  If
somebody has problems they have to do the work.

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