research on using the GFDL

Karsten Wade kwade at redhat.com
Thu May 5 00:52:36 UTC 2005


Since we incorporated some text from the GNOME Documentation Style Guide
(GDSG), we need to update our Doc Guide to attribute the included
content covered under the GFDL.  

Then we need to decide if we're forking.  I think we are.  We will have
to manually include patches from GDSG.  The diff between the two guides
will be too great, and will go over time.

However, we need to capture immediately the bug fixes we made so we can
get them upstream, before they get lost and our reasoning gets stale.
Paul, can you dig out from SVN what you did previously?  We'll add that
to the fixes I made and you made in cvs.fedora and split up the list to
file bug reports.

Now, on to the fun stuff ...

Today I read the GFDL again, read some opinions from debian-legal, and
did some thinking.  Here is what I have so far.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt

## We need to take an action to comply with this:

B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities
   responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified
   Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the
   Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five),
   unless they release you from this requirement.

## We need to create/modify History, with that title :/

I. Preserve the section Entitled "History", Preserve its Title, and add
   to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and
   publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page.  If
   there is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one
   stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as
   given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified
   Version as stated in the previous sentence.

## After some digging, here is one of those canonical pages:

http://developer.gnome.org/documents/style-guide/titlepage.html

## The whole thing with "Exactly Named Pages" is a little strange.  The
## GDSG doesn't have a link from the ToC on index.html to
## titlepage.html.

## The following action is to make sure there is a page, on or linked
## from the "History" page, that tells how to get the source for the
## document.

J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for
   public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise
   the network locations given in the Document for previous versions
   it was based on.  These may be placed in the "History" section.
   You may omit a network location for a work that was published at
   least four years before the Document itself, or if the original
   publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.

## We need to redo the organization a bit, I think we all like the way
## GNOME doc prefaces are laid out.  We can start by creating a History
## etc. to fulfill licensing agreements.

K. For any section Entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications",
   Preserve the Title of the section, and preserve in the section all
   the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements
   and/or dedications given therein.

## Beginning to wonder if we need an appendix to cover some of this
## stuff ...

## Here is an important part that tells us exactly what we need to do in
## combining the documents, which is arguably what we did:

5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS

You may combine the Document with other documents released under this
License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified
versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the
Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and
list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its
license notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.

The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and
multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single
copy.  If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but
different contents, make the title of each such section unique by
adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original
author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number.
Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of
Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.

In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled "History"
in the various original documents, forming one section Entitled
"History"; likewise combine any sections Entitled "Acknowledgements",
and any sections Entitled "Dedications".  You must delete all sections
Entitled "Endorsements".

####################

One problem I am hearing about occurs if we include the
"Acknowledgements" or "Dedication" section, we may greatly reduce the
freedom of our document.  In this matter I defer to the debian-legal
list for all the reasoning.  Here is a page that appears to cover all
the details:

http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html

Because the GDSG doesn't include any Invariants or other immutable
content, we are fully free to use it.  Similarly, our GFDL is nicely
fully free.

Anyway, I don't want to seek legal advice unless we can't find a clear
precedent of how to act.  It's seeming clear, so far.

cheers - Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
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