Request for approval: EUPL (European Union Public Licence)

Matthew Flaschen matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu
Sat Mar 15 15:42:00 UTC 2008


Ian Vernon wrote:
> Flaschen, Matthew wrote:
> 
>>> In my opinion, it would be unwise of the OSI to approve the non-English 
>>> language versions at this time.  This is because translation errors can 
>>> affect the meaning, the majority of the OSI board is only fluent in 
>>> English (as far as I know), and hiring independent translators familiar 
>>> with legal terms would be cost-prohibitive.
> 
> I wonder if there is a need for OSI to approve any version of the license
> since it already came into law in 2007 and considering what is intended for:

My mistake.  I sent my reply to license-discuss instead of 
license-review, and I may not have made it clear that it was submitted 
by the EU to license-review for approval.

Given that, I think it deserves consideration.

> The license was cleverly written in simple legal language minimising
> translation errors from the three main European languages (German, French,
> English) to all the other European languages (there are 22 official
> versions)

That may have been the intention, but there's no guarantee without OSI 
having experts review the translations.

Matt Flaschen



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