Re: Documenting Gnome apps with the GPL

[Alexander Kirillov <kirillov math sunysb edu>]

On Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 05:22:53PM -0700, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     We do include FDL as a plain text file COPYING-DOCS with any package
>     that contains FDL-covered docs, and the suggested titlepage of every
>     doc will read something like 
>     "This document is covered by GNU Free Documentation License. A copy of
>     this license can be found at this link (link to DocBook version
>     included in gnome-core) or in the file COPYING-DOCS included with this
>     package"
> 
> In a collection of manuals, it is ok if some manuals don't have their
> own copies of the GFDL.  But it is important to do this in a way that
> explains the situation clearly to the users.  In order to redistribute
> one of those manuals legally, the user must change first.  We need to
> make users aware of this--otherwise they are very likely to violate
> the GFDL without realizing they are doing so.
> 
> What I recommend is this:
> 
> * Each large manual, more than 50 pages, should have its own
> copy of the GFDL.
> 
> * Each small manual should have a notice like this on the copyright
> page:
> 
>     This document is part of a collection distributed under the GNU Free
>     Documentation License.  If you want to distribute this document
>     separately from the collection, you can do so by adding a copy of the
>     license to the document, as described in section 6 of the license.
> 
> This way, anyone who wants to redistribute a small manual will have a
> clear statement of what he must change to do that properly.

These both sound reasonable to me. John, Pat, Dan: what do you think?





> 
>     As for the printed version, GNOME Doc Project does not distribute
>     them, so strictly speaking it is not our responsibility but that of
>     distributors of printed documents to include a copy of FDL.
> 
> Here again, we need to look toward making the right things happen,
> not just complying with the GFDL's legal requirements.
> 
> I think it is best for each manual to be set up so that the printed
> version includes the GFDL.  This way, individual printed copies of the
> manual will be ok.  Anyone who wants to print and publish a collection
> can of course remove the excess copies.
> 
> In Texinfo, I would do this with
> 
>     @iftex
>     @include gfdl.texi
>     @end iftex
> 
> I don't know how to do it in DocBook--is there a way?
> 
> 
> Another alternative is to combine a few manuals so that the natural
> way to print them is as a group.  Then include just one copy of the
> GFDL in that group.
> 

Unfortunately, AFAIK there is no easy way to force this in DocBook -
the appearance of DocBook is determined by stylesheet, and it is
very easy to write stylesheet that, for example, completely ignores
all <legalnotice>s and does not print any of them, or that allows
you to produce PDF from just one <sect1> of the document. I think the
best we can do is create DocBook that would include FDL in the printed
version when using the standard stylesheets - i.e., Norm's modular
stylesheets. Eric: can this be done? 

Sasha