Re: Planning for 2.18?

[Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress at gmail dot com>]

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 9:30 PM, Carlos O'Donell <carlos@systemhalted.org> wrote:
> Community,
>
> I encourage everyone to step in and talk about what they
> want to see in 2.18 and how we might accomplish it.
>
> Why plan?
>
> (a) It gives other people and other projects
> visibility into what we consider important and
> what will likely be available in the next release.
> This allows others to coordinate better with us.
>
> (b) It causes us to take stock of the things
> we consider important and prioritize against that.
> This is one good way to make incremental progress over
> time towards improving the project.
>
> Joseph Myers and I have started writing down some ideas here:
>
> http://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Release/2.18
>
> A good place to look for ideas is our new master TODO list:
>
> http://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Development_Todo/Master
>
> Comments?
>
> Cheers,
> Carlos.

The issue of the inadvertantly mangled license information lines in
many existing glibc locales has been of some concern to downstreams
(e.g. Sugar Labs, Debian, etc.) for some time.

See:

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

and

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=555168

I have been gently poking Gnome Foundation Board members and FSF Legal
Counsel (Donald R Robertson III via license-internal@fsf.org) on the
matter and there has been some movement, which I am trying to get
filed on the ticket "for the record".

The most recent update from FSF is:

------------

"I've gotten approval on the use of the following language:"

###
This file is a part of GLIBC and contains locale data.The Free
Software Foundation does not claim any copyright interest in the
locale data contained in this file. The foregoing does not affect the
license of GLIBC as a whole. It does not exempt you from the
conditions of the license if your use would otherwise be governed by
that license.
###

"We should be making an announcement shortly regarding older locales
files, but for now new locales files should use this statement in lieu
of any other licensing statement. Thank you so much for your time, and
let me know if you have any further questions."

------------

In light of this incremental progress, it would be a thought to
include implementing a resolution for #11213 across many locales files
in the plans for 2.18.

It will no doubt be a tedious process to touch each locale file and to
keep track of progress,  I am certainly willing to work on the
administrivia of creating patches and tracking progress that will
involved once FSF goes on record with how they want older locale files
handled.  I'd need a collaborator with commit priv to review and
commit.  Not exactly glamorous stuff, but important nonetheless.

cjl
Sugar Labs Translation Team Coordinator