Hello --

On Thu, 16 May 2002, Juergen Katins wrote:

> > Something completely unrelated: I was abit surprised by the license on
> > the translation. Does the OPL allow this transition to a GNU Free
> > Documentation License?
>
> I am no license expert but I understand the OPL as "Do whatever you
> want with this document". You could even redistribute it as part of a
> non free book. Even more the translation of a book creates an own new
> copyright owned by the translator (who must however have the license
> to translate).

I'm not a license expert either, but even a brief glance at the OPL
indicates clearly that your caricature of that license ("do whatever
you want") has little to do with the license itself.

As for having the license to translate: yes, you had such a license,
but that license required you to include the following (with
appropriate interpolations):

  Copyright (c) <year> by <author's name or designee>. This material may
  be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in
  the Open Publication License, vX.Y or later (the latest version is
  presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).

which I do not see anywhere in your translation.

Whether or not the OPL "even" allows you to "redistribute [the work]
as part of a non free book" (the example you used to defend your "do
whatever you want" misreading) is not the issue.  The issue is whether
or not the OPL allows you to distribute a translation of the book (a
"modified version", in the terms of the license) without including the
above copyright notice.  I see nothing in the OPL granting you
permission to do this.


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack / candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav / shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav