translate.fp.org requires legal T&Cs agreement of Fedora contributors #553
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council/tickets#553
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This is a ticket to request Council oversight/action on the T&Cs agreement with Weblate for translate.fedoraproject.org
TL:DR: Fedora contributors using the official https://translate.fedoraproject.org service are being required to sign a legal T&Cs agreement with the Weblate organization with many clauses defining obligations for payment and invoicing on the user.
IMHO this is inappropriate for an official Fedora community service to request of our contributors, whether hosted by Fedora infra or by a 3rd party on behalf of Fedora.
Last week I opened
https://pagure.io/fedora-l10n/tickets/issue/45
with an unsatisfactory answer and then wrote
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/ADYMRIYYSIFTTKZBKKYAEOX4S2HLQNRI/
where it has now been suggested to escalate to Council, hence this ticket.
Metadata Update from @jflory7:
See linked Fedora Discussion topic for Ticket 553
Discussed in 2025-12-03 Fedora Council meeting.
The Fedora Council discussed this topic during our recent meeting. We understand why the community is upset and confused by the Weblate Terms & Conditions (T&Cs). Although these terms are dated from November 2024 and have not changed recently, the language implying that individual contributors ("Users") are obliged to pay invoices is unacceptable in the context of our community platform.
It appears likely that Weblate did not fully understand the implications of applying these standard commercial terms to our specific hosted instance. However, we want to be absolutely clear: Red Hat holds a specific contract with Weblate for this service which supersedes the general T&Cs users are seeing, and the financial responsibility lies solely with Red Hat. There is no obligation for individual translators or users to take financial responsibility for the Fedora Weblate service.
I am currently working with stakeholders at Red Hat and Weblate to clarify this situation and ensure these confusing T&Cs are addressed and not shown to Fedora translators. We ask for your patience while we work through these legal and administrative details. Please feel reassured that you are not liable for these costs, and we encourage you to continue your valuable translation work.
Metadata Update from @jflory7:
While the terms might date back to 2024, from a Fedora contributor POV something changed much more recently. AFAICT weblate only started requiring Feora contributors to agree to the new ToS in approx the Nov 2025 timeframe. Possibly they didn't sync the new ToS to the Fedora weblate instance until very recently ?
Until the UI started mandating agreement from Fedora contributors upon login at end of last year, only first time Fedora contributors would have been required to agree to the updates ToS, so no one else could be considered bound to them until now.
@berrange Is this still an issue?
Yes, this is still an issue. We can't login to Fedora Weblate without accepting the general T&C. The T&C we would have to accept say nothing about Red Hat specific contract that would supersede the general terms in the financial responsibility part. Thus blindly accepting them is not a viable workaround. The part of T&C that is not applicable should just not be there at all. As a result we've been unable to administer translation projects for several months now. Not to mention that we might be losing contributors who don't want to blindly agree with the terms.
@jflory7 wrote in #553 (comment):
Yes, it is absolutely still an issue, unchanged since I first reported this. Anyone with a Fedora account can see this if they visit 'translate.fedoraproject.org' and sign in with their Fedora account. Assuming they've not already agreed, they'll immediately get presented with the T&C and be unable to proceed to do anything without agreeing (which I decline to do).
@jdenemar @berrange I apologize, I might have given you the wrong impression. This was not me asking you if your opinion changed that this is an issue. It was that we have been liaising with the vendor about this, and I was trying to confirm reproduction of the issue.
I will continue escalating this with Weblate to figure out why these terms are being presented. I will follow up again when I have an update directly from Weblate.
We are negotiating billing logistics. I hope these are resolved in early March. Once they are resolved, these ToS can be updated in early to mid-March.
In 2025, Weblate changed from a sole proprietorship into a full, legal business entity in the Czech Republic. This has caused billing challenges. At the same time, Red Hat also changed its type of U.S. business entity in January 2026. In short, the lawyers and accountants need some time to work through all of this. 🤯
I know the delay in this issue is not great, but legal matters like this for services and infrastructure we do not host ourselves can be complicated. 😥 We are working on this though, as Weblate is an important tool for our localization community and we do not want to create the false idea of licensing. 📝
If it is any consolation in the short-term, the consensus is that the Fedora Project Contributor Agreement is the legally-sound terms for how the licensing and copyright of contributors is treated. 🧑⚖️ I think the FPCA is very clear about this and leaves no ambiguity. We have an acknowledgment that the Weblate terms are mistakenly offered and the Red Hat-negotiated terms are supreme.
WHILE I AM NOT A LAWYER AND CANNOT GIVE LEGAL OR FINANCIAL ADVICE, from a Red Hat legal perspective, Fedora contribution copyright is governed by the Fedora Project Contributor Agreement.
I hope to have another update in mid-March.
hi @jflory7 kind reminder here, any update?
@jibecfed We checked in on Matrix earlier. Thanks for sending your follow-up email to Weblate. I'm not sure why the Weblate team is not getting back to @jasonbrooks' emails? I am very frustrated by the timeline to get this fixed. It should not be that hard. 😞
Let's keep an eye on your email thread and see if we can get to the bottom of this, finally.
I'll ping them again about it.
Did you get any response about timeframe for resolving this issue ?
@berrange wrote in #553 (comment):
They said they'd replace the text with substitute text of our suggestion, I'm working w/ RH legal on suggested text. It'll be something like, the fedora privacy policy applies here, I'll update this ticket when we get it settled.
@jasonbrooks wrote in #553 (comment):
Thank you, Jason!
If somebody wonders about the situation, I tried to explain here: localization/tickets#45 (comment)
Solution is in the works.
@jasonbrooks wrote in #553 (comment):
Another 7 weeks on, now over 6 months since first reporting this problem. Do we have an ETA for fixing this yet ?
This has been under active discussion outside of this ticket. The Red Hat Open Source & AI Program Office (OSAIPO) team is working directly with the Weblate team to resolve this, and I had the chance to sit down with the Weblate team and @jibecfed, one of the Fedora Localization team leads, in person at Flock to Fedora in June 2026 to go through the specific points of conflict.
The core issue is that Fedora Weblate is a hosted service where Weblate, not Fedora Infrastructure, is the data controller. Weblate's Terms & Conditions reflect standard industry language for their obligations under EU law, including GDPR, as an independent data controller. At the same time, access to Fedora Weblate requires a FAS login, so we can reasonably treat any content contributed there as already governed by the Fedora Project Contributor Agreement (FPCA). This isn't a typical situation for the lawyers involved to draft around, since it requires coordinated legal review across multiple organizations, and that kind of cross-organizational legal work takes time.
We're committed to resolving this, but our working position in the meantime is that the FPCA takes precedence for governing individual ownership and copyright of contributions, and guarantees that Fedora's default licensing terms apply to content hosted on the Weblate instance. There's no Council action required on this at this time. I'm adding @shaunm and @jasonbrooks as assignees alongside myself, since we're the ones coordinating with Weblate and Fedora Localization, and keeping this labeled
role/fcaand blocked while the legal coordination continues.Assisted-by: Claude Sonnet 5 (1M context)