GFDL.. Was: [PATCH] UDG: Begins book->help pages conversion

[Jeff Schering]

On 8/7/06, Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> Another thing, those appendices are pretty ugly, do we really need to
> reproduce each licence in an appendix like that? How about if we shipped
> them with the system as articles and linked to them from the "About this
> document" page? I'll take a look to see if this is appropriate legally
> speaking. What do people think?
>

I'm not a lawyer, but I did go through the FDL and found that we might
be able to link to the FDL instead of including it.

I might have missed something, but I found nowhere in the document
where it explicity declared that a copy of the FDL must be included
with a new, original work. Including the document is only implied in
the "ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents" section
where sample copyright notices are given.

So it appears that we can link to the FDL provided that the document
is entirely original.

However, if the document is distributed by someone other than the
copyright holder, or modifications to the document are made, then a
copy of the FDL must be included. (section H in the "GNU FDL
Modification Conditions" says: "Include an unaltered copy of this
License."

I think if there is no GFDL text in the document from other sources,
then we can simply print the copyright notice and link to the FDL,
should we choose to release under the FDL.

My personal preference is to not use the FDL at all, and to instead
use a liberal, non-viral license that permits the re-use of text
provided that credit is given to Ubuntu Docteam in some manner, along
with the list of contributors to the document. This will allow for the
distribution of docteam docs by third party publishers, possibly for a
fee, much the same way that hard copy docs are currently distributed
by lulu.com. I think the more the docs get around the better, and
therefore we need a liberal license.

Something like this maybe:

"Copyright 2006 by Ubuntu Documentation Team. You may copy all or part
of this text into a new document provided you make clear in the new
document that the source of the copied text is the Ubuntu
Documentation Team, and that credit is given to the authors of the
original document."

The above license (or one like it) would only be applicable to
completely original documents. It will allow others to re-use docteam
work provided they acknowledge the docteam and the authors of that
work in the new work. When it comes to importing text verbatim into
docteam work, it is no more troublesome than the current dual thingy.

Also, do we need to make sure all documents are released under an
identical licensing scheme? Maybe we can look at the license on a
document-by-document basis. We already have the style guide in the
public domain, and others could follow.

In future, I think that when you join the docteam, you should agree
that any words you write for it become the property of the docteam.
That way, the docteam can, as a team in its normal decision-making
process, make changes to the licensing of its docs without requiring
permissions from those who donated the words. But that's just my
opinion.

Cheers,
Jeff

-- 
Jeff Schering
GPG: F23C67E8