I was pinged on a Unicode repository
https://github.com/unicode-org/unilex/issues/10#issuecomment-1872496490
asking for a WMF perspective on license compatibility. I gave my
personal answer but I'm notifying the list in case someone does want to
answer in name of WMF as Unicode member/user. (Also cc'ing Hugo, Stephen
and Richard as I mentioned them.)
As my answer turned out to be rather long I'll copy it here for the
archives' benefit.
----
@srl295 Thanks for the ping. I wasn't aware of this issue but I'll give
a quick reply. I've only read the discussion above and the README. I
can't speak for WMF, let alone Unicode (I don't remember whether WMF is
even a member now), but I can tell about the usage of Unicode components
in MediaWiki software and Wikimedia wikis.
The issue description highlights some confusion on the licensing of this
project. Meanwhile the LICENSE has been updated to the Unicode license
v3 which has been recently approved by OSI on 2023-11-17:
https://opensource.org/license/unicode-license-v3/ . So there's no doubt
this repository is opensource. Maybe this can be explicitly mentioned on
the README, as not everyone is able to recognize the license text as its
own OSI-approved Unicode v3 license.
MediaWiki can and does use software under Unicode license all the time,
for example in the [CLDR
extension](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CLDR), which is
primarily GPLv2, under the understanding that the CLDR data inside was
under a BSD-like license. (Apertium linguistic data is also
[usually](https://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Contributing_to_an_existing_pair#Co…
under GPL.) As long as Unilex can be used in GPL software, there are
probably ways it can benefit all Wikimedia wikis through MediaWiki.
However @hugolpz seems most concerned about usage in Wikidata and other
Wikimedia wikis _content_. From the README it sounds like this
repository mostly wants to collect uncopyrightable factual information.
In the EU, there might still be problems with database rights. A general
opinion from the WMF on how to handle these is at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights . In short,
it's complicated, and it's easier to incorporate a dataset into Wikidata
when it's already under CC-0. If there's some doubt on whether the data/
directory here as a whole is a dataset
If you want to cooperate with Wikidata lexemes in the future, it's worth
considering how to make it easier. As for LinguaLibre, as far I
understand it helps produce some recording which might be considered
copyrightable, and it wants its outputs to be available under CC BY-SA,
so it benefits from its sources being as permissive as possible.
Finally, I see that [many
files](https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aunicode-org%2Funilex+SPDX-License…
carry a `SPDX-License-Identifier: Unicode-DFS-2016` header, which makes
it easier to follow the [Reuse](https://reuse.software/) guidelines.
Note Richard Fontana's suggestion for trivial files at
https://github.com/fsfe/reuse-docs/issues/62#issuecomment-1200305896
(and my personal opinion below it).
So in conclusion my personal suggestions are:
* mark the repository even more clearly as being under OSI-approved
license Unicode v3;
* keep marking the individual files copyright status, and consider even
more permissive licenses like MIT-0 (or 0BSD or CC-0) when adding
uncopyrightable files;
* keep in mind possible copyright needs for Wikidata and Wikimedia
Commons in the future, and ask help from WMF legal (legal(a)wikimedia.org)
on any possible/needed clarifications for CC-0 and CC BY-SA
compatibility (fyi @slaporte).
----
Cheers,
Federico
We would like to announce the release of MediaWiki Language Extension
Bundle 2023.10. This bundle is compatible with '''MediaWiki >=
1.39.0''' and requires '''PHP >= 7.4.0'''.
The next MLEB is expected to be released in 3 months. If there are
very important bug fixes, we will do an intermediate release. Please
give us your feedback at
[[Talk:MLEB|https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:MLEB]].
* Download: https://translatewiki.net/mleb/MediaWikiLanguageExtensionBundle-2023.10.tar…
* sha256sum: 8b3f356014f1bfdf8c08ec8778c200f1e25567c210d1ee93ba7b7e3f894947ab
* Signature: https://translatewiki.net/mleb/MediaWikiLanguageExtensionBundle-2023.10.tar…
Quick links:
* Installation instructions are at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MLEB
* Announcements of new releases will be posted to a mailing list:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/mediawiki-i18n.lists.wikimedia.…
* Report bugs to: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/1464
Release notes for each extension are below.
== Highlights ==
* Translate extension: Removed <code>mirrors</code> option when
providing configuration for translation memory.
== Babel ==
* Localisation and maintenance updates.
== CleanChanges ==
* Localisation and maintenance updates.
== cldr ==
* Localisation and maintenance updates.
== Translate ==
* Removed <code>mirrors</code> option when providing configuration for
translation memory. See
[[Help:Extension:Translate/Translation_memories#Configuration|related
documentation]].
* Translate extension no longer uses jQuery.ui ({{phab|T323332}}).
* Added an option to leave a redirect when moving a translatable page
({{phab|T62920}}).
* Improve compatibility between syntaxhighlight and translate when
using Parsoid ({{phab|T341009}}, {{gerrit|957761}}).
* Special:PagePreparation: Improve error handling, and message
displayed to the user. ({{phab|T342628}}).
* Special:AggregateGroups: Replace previous group selector with a more
user-friendly group selection tool.
* Made UI tweaks to search translations page to break long words to
avoid breaking the layout ({{gerrit|968673}}).
* Localisation and maintenance updates.
== UniversalLanguageSelector ==
* Added AwamiNastaliqBold font ({{gerrit|957266}}).
* Removed all TTF font files ({{gerrit|957273}}).
* Added Tiro Bangla font for Bengali Language ({{phab|T343658}}).
* Updated Junicode font to 2.100 ({{phab|T253006}}).
* Save preferred languages for named users only ({{phab|T337780}}).
* Fixed an error that would cause ULS to not open when clicked if the
wiki is configured to allow anonymous users to change their language
({{gerrit|969342}}).
* Localisation and maintenance updates.
--
Kartik Mistry | કાર્તિક મિસ્ત્રી
kartikm.wordpress.com
We would like to announce the release of MediaWiki Language Extension
Bundle 2023.04. This bundle is compatible with '''MediaWiki >=
1.38.0''' and requires '''PHP >= 7.4.0'''.
The next MLEB is expected to be released in 3 months. If there are
very important bug fixes, we will do an intermediate release. Please
give us your feedback at
[[Talk:MLEB|https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:MLEB]].
* Download: https://translatewiki.net/mleb/MediaWikiLanguageExtensionBundle-2023.04.tar…
* sha256sum: c39c9d969255808a628e9fe2a9a2eceefd14ee5d3d0ef8d1fd1a4765804ad896
* Signature: https://translatewiki.net/mleb/MediaWikiLanguageExtensionBundle-2023.04.tar…
Quick links:
* Installation instructions are at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MLEB
* Announcements of new releases will be posted to a mailing list:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/mediawiki-i18n.lists.wikimedia.…
* Report bugs to: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/1464
Release notes for each extension are below.
== Highlights ==
* This is the last release of MLEB supporting '''MediaWiki >= 1.38'''
== Babel ==
* Fix "User categories creation should be able to use templates"
({{phab|T211665}}, {{gerrit|881947}})
* Add ability to override Babel categories ({{gerrit|881944}})
* Fix "Some language tags show wrong language ("English") in Babel
boxes" ({{phab|T64714}}, {{gerrit|884400}})
== CleanChanges and cldr ==
* Localisation and maintenance updates.
== Translate ==
* Optionally allow setting a source language for aggregate groups
({{phab|T281073}})
* Allow fetching translation statistics for messages with similar
prefix ({{phab|T298966}})
* Fix bug with importing fuzzy translations from .po files ({{phab|T323430}})
* Add back-links in various special pages in the Translate extension
* Use a text-based group selector in Special:ExportTranslations in
order to improve usability when a large number of message groups are
present ({{phab|T331843}})
* Show error message if group being exported has no translations for
selected language ({{phab|T331824}})
* Display "Translate" tab if a user has permission to translate
irrespective of whether public editing is enabled ({{phab|T334330}})
* Add support to configure readable and writable translation memory
services separately ({{phab|T322284}})
** Support for the <code>mirrors</code> configuration parameter will
be dropped in the next MLEB release.
== UniversalLanguageSelector ==
* Localisation and maintenance updates.
* Fix issues with up/down keys navigation for the ULS menu ({{phab|T328956}})
* Remove ULSMobileWebfontsEnabled configuration option ({{phab|T332837}})
--
Kartik Mistry | કાર્તિક મિસ્ત્રી
kartikm.wordpress.com
The Wikimedia Language Engineering team is pleased to announce the
first release of the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle. The bundle
is a collection of selected MediaWiki extensions needed by any wiki
which desires to be multilingual.
This first bundle release (2012.11) is compatible with MediaWiki 1.19,
1.20 and 1.21alpha.
Get it from https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MLEB
The Universal Language Selector is a must have, because it provides an
essential functionality for any user regardless on the number of
languages he/she speaks: language selection, font support for
displaying scripts badly supported by operating systems and input
methods for typing languages that don't use Latin (a-z) alphabet.
Maintaining multilingual content in a wiki is a mess without the
Translate extension, which is used by Wikimedia, KDE and
translatewiki.net, where hundreds of pieces of documentation and
interface translations are updated every day; with Localisation Update
your users will always have the latest translations freshly out of the
oven. The Clean Changes extension keeps your recent changes page
uncluttered from translation activity and other distractions.
Don't miss the chance to practice your rusty language skills and use
the Babel extension to mark the languages you speak and to find other
speakers of the same language in your wiki. And finally the cldr
extension is a database of language and country translations.
We are aiming to make new releases every month, so that you can easily
stay on the cutting edge with the constantly improving language
support. The bundle comes with clear installation and upgrade
installations. The bundle is tested against MediaWiki release
versions, so you can avoid most of the temporary breaks that would
happen if you were using the latest development versions instead.
Because this is our first release, there can be some rough edges.
Please provide us a lot of feedback so that we can improve for the
next release.
-Niklas
--
Niklas Laxström