[OSM-legal-talk] Translations of osm.org

Matt Amos zerebubuth at gmail.com
Tue Jun 23 01:17:04 BST 2009


On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 10:17 PM, Frederik Ramm<frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> Jonas Krückel wrote:
>> And the second question is, if it is allowed to translate the agreement
>> for the user at the sign up process (a word was "ported" about the
>> license, I don't really now what this means here)?
>
> If we take all this seriously (and I don't necessarily want to say we
> have to), then, since the body responsible for the legal side of all
> this is OSMF and OSMF cannot possibly check every language all the time,
> I guess that there would have to be some disclaimer at the end of all
> legal-related translations saying that the translation is given on a
> best-effort basis but where uncertainties arise, the English version is
> the binding one.
>
> Then again I don't know if that's legal, ouch.

as i understand it (and i'm not a lawyer, etc...) the "ported" license
goes beyond a simple translation and uses laws specific to the
jurisdiction. in that case it isn't appropriate to use the "ported"
license and specify that the english one is binding, as the english
one may have differences in interpretation.

from the Licensing Working Group discussions with OSMF's counsel, our
best option might be to not translate the license itself but translate
the "extra-legal" text (i.e: FAQs and do's and don'ts). these often
have legal weight - in case of dispute the court may take them into
account - but then the english text can unambiguously be used as the
binding version.

cheers,

matt




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