Richard Stallman é um dos proeminentes delegados na 4a. Conferência Internacional sobre a GPLv3 em Bangalore, e foi publicada uma transcrição de uma entrevista com RMS em que ele responde a perguntas sobre a nova versão da licença e sobre software livre em geral.
Toda tradução seria uma oportunidade de cometer um erro. E todo erro poderia ser um desastre. Software livre necessita ser escrito em inglês, e a razão é que este é o idioma entendido por programadores ao redor do mundo. Obviamente, tê-la em outros idiomas seria uma coisa boa. Assim, encorajamos os outros a publicar traduções claramente marcadas como inoficiais, e linkamos a elas em nosso site. Você pode usá-las como guias se não lê inglês.
Q10: As for translations, will there be versions in Spanish, French? Official versions of v3?
RMS: We're not sure. It's very dangerous to make an official translation of the GPL. What if we made a horrible mistake?
If it's a Spanish translation, I can read it. That doesn't mean that I will understand its legal consequences. Y'now, producing a translation in Castellano would be as much work as producing the original English version. Well, maybe it will only be a quarter as much work. That's a lot of work.
And then, although I've got some idea what these words mean in regard to US copyright law, from many years of discussing these issues with copyright lawyers, but that doesn't mean that I have the faintest idea... I probably don't even know the vocabulary of law in Castellano.
Those are words I don't know. And now imagine what happens when someone wants a Polish translation. This is a very hard problem.
Q10b: Could the FSFE work on it?
RMS: Well, the thing is, maybe yes and maybe no. How would the FSF Europe work on it? They would get lawyers to do it, but, who are those lawyers, and to what extent do we know we can trust them. It's really hard, because a mistake could be a Worldwide disaster.
Now, I've got the idea, maybe we could release a translation approved only for one country. We could release a translation in Castellano, approved only for Spain, and then separately we could release one only for Mexico, and it might be the same.
But, even if it's the same, the point is, it's got to be checked for Mexico. The crucial thing is, we don't want it to be valid in the US, or China, India, Brazil, and so on. Because, if we release fifty translations and each one is valid everywhere, that's fifty chances for a horrible mistake to happen. Even if we were just as reliable with each translation as we are with the original, I don't want to have fifty times the chance to make a mistake. So this is one way to limit it.
Now, another question is: would it be ok to release a time-limited translation? I'm not sure about this. The master GPL cannot be time-limited. If we give you certain freedoms, it must be forever. However, maybe it's ok if the translation is time-limited and may be replaced with another translation. This way, maybe we can correct errors. Errors are much less dangerous if we can correct them. But it's not clear that it's acceptable, even for a translation, to be time limited, to not be forever.
It's a very hard job.
I Agree with you Mr.
Leidson Campos A. Ferreira
PlanetaMessenger.org (Java Universal Messenger)