“Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Compliance” Now in Chinese

November 23, 2016

Software Freedom Conservancy is pleased to announce that the Kaiyuanshe Legal Committee has translated the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Compliance in Chinese. Kaiyuanshe, roughly translated as open source alliance, is a group of enterprises, communities, and individuals in China supporting and promoting free and open source software. The document is available for download on Kaiyuanshe's web site and on Conservancy's site in HTML and as a PDF.

The Principles were published by Conservancy and the Free Software Foundation last year, and set forth norms around community-oriented enforcement, removing uncertainty for companies who face compliance actions and providing criteria for evaluating whether license compliance is in the community's interest. The translation was primarily worked on by Richard Lin and Maggie Wang, members of the Kaiyuanshe Legal Committee.

More and more Chinese companies are embracing Free and Open Source Software, but not enough participants truly understand our communities' expectations around compliance, said Lin, Community Director for Huawei Developer Zone. We in Kaiyuanshe want to help more people to truly understand Free and Open Source Software, and call for more people, organizations and companies to contribute together.

The principles are good education and very clear to put into practice, added Wang, Representative in China for Ladas & Parry LLP. I believe the publication of the Principles will ease the tension for a lot of companies who are willing to adopt GPL'd software.

Karen Sandler, Executive Director of Conservancy commented, This is part of the impressive work undertaken by the Kaiyuanshe Legal Committee. This coordination by Kaiyuanshe shows the strength of all of the organizations and companies that have come together in China.