On Thu, 15 May 2003, Nikolaos I. Ioakimidis wrote:
> Naturally, I am very disappointed from the above outcome of my
> intervention, but I compleletly repect your views not to accept
> COPYING1 in your and your collaborators' so careful and useful
> work with the French translation of the Maxima Manual and the
> Windows installer.
One point to consider on this is at what point a user manual in a
different language stops being a "derived work". After all, a manual is
not like a novel, where there is a high degree of artistic content
involved - or at least I hope not! - and that artistic content is what
should be protected across the translation.
There are, after all, only a limited number of ways in which one can
usefully explain e.g. the arguments to SOLVE, and likely many cultural
differences that need to be taken into account to produce a useful manual
in another language. Isn't it therefore reasonable to say that such
manuals are original works, and thus avoid the problem?
James