Relicensing pt_BR translation file

[Matt Mackall]

On Thu, 2009-10-08 at 21:31 -0300, Wagner Bruna wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> We (Diego Oliveira and me) relicensed our pt_BR translation work as
> 3-clause BSD, for the benefit of the TortoiseHg translation¹. Would it
> be possible (and desirable) for the Mercurial project to distribute
> its i18n/pt_BR.po file (or, more precisely, its Brazilian Portuguese
> strings) as 3-clause BSD (therefore including future contributions)?
> 
> If so, I'll send a patch to add the licensing terms to the beginning
> of that file.
> 
> Thanks,
> Wagner
> 1. https://help.launchpad.net/Translations/LicensingFAQ

Sorry, you can't do that. Faithful translation of text into other
languages unquestionably constitutes a derived work of the original
text. That applies pretty much anywhere in the world that sells books.

The text in Mercurial is GPLv2, ergo translations of that text must also
be GPLv2.

I have no idea what the Launchpad folks are thinking, but this clearly
cannot work for translating GPLed projects (or any of the numerous
licenses with rights less permissive than BSD).

And there's no way we're going to make some weird hybrid license that
says "all code is GPL, all text strings are BSD".

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