[Doc-SIG] Translation License and Contribution Agreement

[Julien Palard]

Hi,

> Here're some questions about the Documentation Contribution Agreement.
>
> 1.
>
> In PEP545, it states we should "Setup the Documentation Contribution
> Agreement". I see most translation repo has a REAME with the example
> text in PEP. However what's the license for the translation is unclear
> to me.

PEP 545 is authoritative about the subject: It's CC0.

> But the po files fetched from transifex say "This file is distributed
> under the same license as the Python package."

It has to be reworded on Transifex side.

> 2.
>
> How can we guarantee the contributor has agreed?
>
> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0545/#id89 says
> "The Documentation Contribution Agreement have to be written by the
> PSF, then listed at https://www.python.org/psf/contrib/ and have its
> own page like https://www.python.org/psf/contrib/doc-contrib-form/."
>
> I think such form is not available yet.

No and it was decided later by the PSF that we would not use one. I should update the PEP according to it.
The main problem is that people are contributing from multiple distinct ways, each country is free to use the tool they want, the process then want to gather translations, as long as it lands on github, so having a proof any string has been contributed by someone who has signed a CLA is impossible (typically the transifex API do not tell who translated what).

The status quo is to clearly display on *top* of our READMES and on different tools (transifex, or other systems) that the work is on CC0, so we "ensure" they had a proper chance to see it.

> 3.
>
> Last question is for zh_CN team. We have previous work done on
> transifex before a README with Documentation Contribution Agreement.
> How can we handle such work?

We had too, here in France, but we knew the people (almost all gathered in a nonprofit fundation)
were aware and OK with this kind of license as it was their main goal, so we just went away and kept their work while adding the license text on top of the README.

> Is there a way to get a list of contributors on transifex

In France we almost don't use transifex, so I really don't know.

> And the way to known what they have
> translated, in case that they don't agree when we ask so that we can
> revert their work.

If there is *no* way to find who translated what, I don't know how we could revert "their" work. Let's hope it does not happen? I don't see anybody telling us "Hey I translated the doc on transifex but refuse it to be used".

Hope it helps... Bests!
-- 
Julien Palard
https://mdk.fr