Corinne McKay on translating in OmegaT
In my day-to-day translation work, I get a lot of mileage out of a number of different computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools, one of which is the very impressive OmegaT, an open source translation memory tool that has an innovative approach to the way translation tasks are handled. One of the most impressive things about OmegaT, however, is that although it has many robust features, it is developed by a team of volunteers who make it available to anyone who would like to use it absolutely free of charge.
Because the developers do not ask for any sort of compensation for their efforts, I am always pleased when I see someone write a nice review of OmegaT, like the one Corinne McKay recently wrote in her blog, Thoughts On Translation. I hope other translators who have tried OmegaT and found it useful will do the same, because the word-of-mouth marketing helps call well deserved attention to this useful application.
I don’t know why you praise a piece of software by a project that pretends that it is FOSS, but manages to repeatedly violate the GPL and act like proprietary open source.
OmegaT+ has confronted these issues and found a number of violations in OmegaT. OmegaT+ has corrected these faults in its own implementation. A new version of OmegaT+ (1.0 M2) is coming out soon. It will have sentence segmentation, as does recent OmegaT. It is still missing a little bit of functionality that OmegaT has now. OmegaT+ is still in early versions (hence the M2 - milestone 2 - version number), but it adheres 100% to the GPL and other licenses. It is also just as stable as any supposed OmegaT stable release version, looks better on Linux and has better integration on OS X.
Let me repeat, OmegaT pretends to be FOSS. Yes, it gives it away, but it does not like forks and has attempted over the past few years to destroy OmegaT+, even though it is perfectly legitimate.
Regards,
Raymond Martin (OmegaT+ project manager/developer, bitext2tmx lead developer/admin)
OmegaT+ http://omegatplus.sourceforge.net
bitext2tmx http://bitext2tmx.sourceforge.net
You are, of course, welcome to your own views on these things, Raymond, but I really don’t see much added value in the OmegaT+ project, which—as far as I can tell—seems to exist primarily because you and the OmegaT developers don’t get along well enough to contribute to the same project.
I was present when you left the OmegaT project (almost three years ago to the day, isn’t it?), and the whole affair left me with a very negative impression of your handling of the matter—regardless of how legally blameless your position is.
If you would like to see OmegaT+ getting the praise that OmegaT is getting now, I think the burden is on your project to earn that praise on the merits of your work. At this stage, rather than staking out a clear lead in development, OmegaT+ seems to be straggling behind OmegaT. Will OmegaT+ ever emerge as a clearly superior product? That is mostly up to you, but the fact that this blog entry (and Corinne McKay’s) was about OmegaT suggests to me that users are able to discern for themselves which product they would rather use—and recommend to others.
Thank you Sako for your rebuttal.
Here, I’ll only address the legal aspects of the claims made by the OmegaT+ project owner (OPPO here below).
=== GPL violations ===
The GPL license is about absolute freedom to use code, which includes the duty to transfer such a freedom to non-copyright holders.
OmegaT uses the GPL version 2.0.
The GPL 2.0 is here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
GPL violations can be reported here:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-violation.html
A short quiz there allows for easy identification of possible violations.
Violations must also be reported to the copyright holder when the holder is not the Free Software Foundation.
=== OmegaT’s source code ===
OmegaT’s source code is here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=68187
All the packages that have “source” in their name contain the source code. The source code is freely available to anybody without any restriction.
The developer version (2.0) is also available through SVN access, with the following command:
svn co https://omegat.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/omegat omegat
The source code consists of:
- OmegaT’s code proper, with the documentation
- External libraries used by OmegaT
Anyone who verifies the source code can see that:
- All of OmegaT’s code (including the documentation) is clearly identified as being available under the GPL license and comes with notices on each code file that indicate the code copyright holders and the distribution license (GPL). The documentation notice is a “legal notice” page linked to from all the pages of the User Manual. The license text itself is included in the package for easy reference.
- All the external libraries are distributed under the LGPL or other GPL compatible licenses. They are all indicated as being the property of their respective copyright holders. They all come with their own copyright and warranty disclaimer information.
The OmegaT project has also added a file named Licences.txt that give for each library: its name, the version used in OmegaT, its distribution license, the location of its source code. There is also a copy of each license in the package.
=== Duties of code distributors ===
The copyright holders of each part of the code have their own way of indicating that their code is available under the license they choose.
To make available a file under the GPL, the GPL itself says:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html#SEC4
“To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.”
Some copyright holders will do it the “safest” way, others won’t. They’ll just put somewhere in the “program” a notice that the program is available under such and such license. And as copyright holders, they have all the rights to do so.
People who use such code must, as the LGPL, for example, says, make sure that each distributed file whose copyright is not held by the distributor comes clearly identified with a copyright notice and a disclaimer of warranty, and that the package is accompanied by a copy of the license.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html
=== Is OmegaT violating the GPL ? ===
The following questions quoted from the “Reporting violations” page above will give us an idea of the likeliness of a GPL violation in OmegaT.
• Is the copyright notice of the copyright holders included?
-> Yes.
• Is the source code completely missing?
-> No. It is there with the exception of vldocking, whose copyright owner prefers a link to a site where the source is available.
• Does the written offer for source, if given, only give a website and/or FTP site where to download the source?
-> There is no written offer for source because either the source is directly available or a link to it is available.
• Is there a copy of the licenses included in the distribution?
-> Yes.
• Is some of the source available, but not all? If so, what parts are missing?
-> See above.
=== Invalid violation claims ? ===
What OPPO is doing on your site and on other locations on the web does not seem to conform to the duty to report to the Free Software Foundation and to the copyright holders.
If there is any “GPL infringement” committed by OmegaT, OPPO must contact the relevant copyright holders as well as the Free Software Foundation with precise information, as the Free Software Foundation requests.
If that has been done but the OmegaT Project has seemingly failed to react in a satisfactory way it means either that they are conspicuously trying to restrict user’s right, and the Free Software Foundation and respective copyright holders should do everything possible to make that stop, or, more simply, that OPPO’s claims are not supported by any evidence.
Post a comment