Dear Mr. Metzger,

I  think  we  were talking about different things from the begin-
ning.

On Thu, Feb 12, 2004 at 10:11:52AM -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> Paulo Alexandre Pinto Pires <p@ppires.org> writes:
> > Technically,  we cannot translate a "copyright", since it doesn't
> > make sense to translate one's _right_ to copy.  However,  we  can
> > translate a copyright notice or statement.
> 
> But this isn't a copyright notice -- it is a license -- so the FAQ you
> read doesn't apply.

But  I  was  iniatially talking about the notice at the bottom of
every page in NetBSD website.  You say that is more than  just  a
copyright notice?  Why?

> >> > Besides, the most important point in
> >> > any license or copyright information is (IMO) to make it perfectly
> >> > clear to the user/reader/victim what rights he has,
> >> 
> >> No. That's not true at all. The law is not about making things
> >> perfectly clear to the reader. The law is about making things legally
> >> enforceable by lawyers. The two have no relationship whatsoever.
> >
> > A  license  is  not the law.
> 
> I see you still do not understand. Go back and re-read what I wrote
> explaining why it is that it is legally irrelevant whether or not the
> license is understandable to non-specialists.

I  do  understand,  and I didn't say otherwise.  What I say about
license (now not talking about copyright information at the  bot-
tom of the pages anymore) existing because of the licensee is be-
cause the licensee has to have something to sign on,  with  which
he  agrees  before and under the law when he signs.  Before sign-
ing, however, he can put his eyes on it and has the right to read
it  thoroughly.   This  doesn't  mean  he will understand it, nor
that the license is for him to understand completely.

By  the  way, that, again, is not the law.  The law is there, and
nobody has ever even to look at it or sign on it  or  even  agree
upon  it or its content to be bound to it and to have to obey it.

What  I  advocate  is that we could provide means (and unofficial
ones would still be perfectly valid) for making it easier for or-
dinary  people  to  have  an idea of what a license would require
from them.  That wouldn't invalidate the original license and its
enforcement, especially if the unofficial version explicitly says
that is its not an authoritative source of license information --
and I never objected to that.

> >> The official grant of rights is the version written in English by
> >> lawyers. (Yes, it was not written by programmers.) It should not be
> >> tampered with without advice from lawyers, and translation (other than
> >> unofficial translation) is a form of tampering.
> >
> > What  grant of what rights on what?
> 
> The grant of a license to the public to use the copyrighted material
> subject to certain constraints.
> 
> If you do not understand this implicitly, you have no business
> even thinking about trying to translate the document.

What  document?   If you mean any document (because everything in
htdocs is copyrighted to The NetBSD Foundation), simply because I
proposed  translating  "all rights reserved", then nothing can be
translated at all by any non-lawyer anywhere, and perhaps even by
lawyers outside the U.S. (not good for volunteer work...).

-- 
	Pappires

... Qui habet aurem audiat quid Spiritus dicat ecclesiis.