Mats> How should it be? Can I just write that the copyright Mats> holder is FSF or should I include myself as a copyright Mats> holder as well? If you wish, you can place yourself as a second copyright-holder. Mats> Are there any legal problems with that? Don't just omit yourself. I don't know what happens if you abandon your rights without a formal assignment. I suspect that rms would refuse to accept your translation as a basis for any work at the FSF without "papers", fearing that your heirs and assigns would sue the FSF and destroy the GNU Project. You could list yourself as author, but explicitly place your work in the public domain. However, I am not sure what happens then, a translation is a rather special kind of work. Anyway, I know rms discourages public domain on general principles. Mats> Should there be papers signed etc. You can hold copyright yourself, and wait until somebody wants to use it for the GNU Project. They will do all the paperwork, you just sign. Or you can write rms(a)gnu.org, saying you want to assign your translation to the FSF. This probably won't take much effort, although rms will undoubtedly solicit you to work on GNU Emacs, and may ask a few questions to decide which of several forms should be used. I'm not a GNU maintainer, I can't help---it would just introduce delays. Do tell him that stephen(a)xemacs.org sent you, though.:-) I would very much appreciate it if you would go to the trouble of signing the papers. Mats> And what about the people that has helped me with Mats> suggestions, proofreading etc? They aren't authors. If they actually did any direct English to Swedish work, they are co-authors; this would basically be important if they wrote more than about 10 lines. If they looked at your Swedish draft and suggested changes, they are not authors and have no copyright interest. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Don't ask how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.

Valdis> But whatever you do, don't say "this is in the public Valdis> domain". Almost any other mnis-assignment of copyright Valdis> can be worked around, but that one's permanent. Right. I'll remember that for the future. I was basically just paraphrasing the GNU Maintainer's Guide material, which of course looks at things purely from the FSF's point of view. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Don't ask how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.

Simon> (Maybe we don't need a license/copyright flame war here, so Simon> please move followups to some appriopriate newsgroup.) Just for the record. I have approached rms with the intent of signing the papers so whether or not the name can be omitted will in this case hopefully soon be history. Yours -- %% Mats