The current copyright notice reads "Content is available under $1." and can be localized. $1 however can't be localized, it's invariably "<a href='http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html'>GNU Free Documentation License</a>".
While I agree this is a touchy issue, I think it would be better if administrators (or whetever you call people who perform the interface localization these days) were able to direct users to translated versions of the license. Please bear in mind that GNU does not link to any translations which are not prefaced with a disclaimer which states that only the English text of the license is valid and can bind users, so that's not an issue.
Why I personally would prefer to point to the localized version of the license in the Romanian Wikipedia is because the "semi-official but unofficial" (as in "linked to by GNU") Romanian version of the GFDL license was translated and is hosted on... the Romanian Wikipedia (see http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html#translationsGFDL).
Is this somehow possible? If not, will it be in the future?
Thanks, Gutza
--- Gutza gutza@moongate.ro wrote:
...I think it would be better if administrators were able to direct users to translated versions of the license.
Any sysop on the Romanian Wikipedia can change this. They just need to edit http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyright and overwrite the $1 with whatever they like. There is no technical reason the $1 has to stay as part of the message.
Angela. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela
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Angela wrote:
--- Gutza gutza@moongate.ro wrote:
...I think it would be better if administrators were able to direct users to translated versions of the license.
Any sysop on the Romanian Wikipedia can change this. They just need to edit http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyright and overwrite the $1 with whatever they like. There is no technical reason the $1 has to stay as part of the message.
Technical - no, I agree. But I tend not to override developer's logic without raising the issue, since I expect they do things the way they do for a reason. Anyway, I will follow your advice, and will also follow this thread -- in case there is some esoteric legal reason for this, then I'll revert.
Thanks, Gutza
Gutza wrote:
Why I personally would prefer to point to the localized version of the license in the Romanian Wikipedia is because the "semi-official but unofficial" (as in "linked to by GNU") Romanian version of the GFDL license was translated and is hosted on... the Romanian Wikipedia (see http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html#translationsGFDL).
It can point to a wiki page, but currently it'll be hardcoded in the configuration, and we don't have a list of all such pages.
Probably should make that overrideable from a MediaWiki: page.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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