[Fedora-legal-list] packaging pregenerated kdelibs-apidocs

[Tom Callaway]

On 01/27/2012 05:06 PM, Kevin Kofler wrote:

> But the LGPL allows converting to the GPL which does not have this
> limitation, and in fact the FSF lists the GPL as a license which can be
> applied to documentation, though it doesn't encourage that practice.

So, this is correct, and it does work past the problem of the LGPLv2 not
being a valid documentation license. If you convert the license on
kdelibs to GPL, then make the apidocs, then the apidocs are under the
terms of either GPLv2 or GPLv3, depending on which is specified by the
person implementing that change (doesn't have to be the copyright
holder, a distributor could do this as well).

So, in this case, we have to comply with the GPL's terms, which means
you have to do one of the following:

A) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source
code [...]

B) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to
give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically
performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the
corresponding source code [...]

C) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to
distribute corresponding source code.

Note that all options refer to "corresponding source code", which means
"the source code used to make the binary", and in the context of the
apidocs, the matching kdelibs library code.

So, from a purely license compliance perspective, shipping the apidocs
without the matching sources in Fedora is a no-go. It's also a no-go
from a "everything must be built from source" rule.

>> The simplest way to fix this would be to amend the kdelibs license to
>> say something like:
>>
>> As an exception to the LGPL, documentation generated from this
>> library for the purposes of documenting the API of this library is
>> licensed under the terms of the *INSERT_YOUR_DOC_LICENSE_HERE*.
> 
> I don't think upstream can realistically change the license. There are 
> dozens of contributors who all hold copyright.

Difficult, perhaps, but not impossible.

~tom

==
Fedora Project