[www-it-traduzioni] Translation of "General Public License"

[Richard Stallman]

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I do not speak Italian, and I don't know whether "generica" in Italian
means the same thing as English "generic".

But if it does, then it is not the right word for translating
"General" in "General Public License".  That does not mean "generic".
The two words in English are quite different, and in this case
"generic" is not correct.

Fabio Pesari asked me what meaning I intended for "General" when I
first published a license under the name "General Public License".

I did my best to answer his question in order to help resolve the
present issue.  But my memories of what I thought about this in 1985
are faded by time.  I did not write anything back then (as far as I
recall) to explain the name I had chosen.

Thus, the best I can do is try to deduce the answer from what I
do remember.  I include my full response to Fabio below.

I now recall that, before 1989, I did use the name "GNU General Public
License" for the version of the license that I used on one-source-file
programs such as cp and rm.

Each large program had its own license with its own name.  GNU Emacs
had the GNU Emacs General Public License, GDB had the GDB General
Public License, and so on.  These licenses were nearly identical, but
each one said which program it applied to.  Thus, the GNU Emacs
General Public License said it was the license for Emacs.  The GDB
General Public License said it was the license for GDB.  And so on.

Meanwhile, the license for one-source-file programs was the same
except that it did not state a name for the program.

It is clear that "General" did not mean the license was generic,
because on the contrary it had to be particularized when applied
to a large program.

I think now that the intended meaning of "General" is "covering all
kinds of uses of this program".


======================================================================
From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
To: Fabio Pesari <address@hidden>

  > I'm a member of GNU.org's Italian translation team and lately we've been 
  > having a debate as to whether we should change the current translation 
  > of "General Public License" to something else than the current "Licenza 
  > Pubblica Generica".

Does "generica" in Italian mean the same thing as "generic" in English?
If so, it is not correct.

  > Some of us (myself included) believe "general public" refers to the 
  > general public but the current translation instead assumes that 
  > "general" refers to the "public license".

Alas, I don't remember what I meant by "General" in 1985 when I chose
the name "GNU Emacs General Public License" for the license of GNU
Emacs.  All I know is that I did NOT mean that the license was for all
programs -- because I did not make such a license until 1989.

However, nowadays the license is meant to be general for all programs.
And "Licencia Pública General" seems correct to me now in Spanish.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.




-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.