Using the GFDL properly

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

Apparently people are still uncertain about how to avoid putting a
full copy of the GFDL in each short document, and whether that
requires somehow misusing the GFDL.

The answer is that section 6 of the GFDL, which says that a collection
of documents can share one copy of the GFDL, provides for this.  It is
entirely consistent with the GFDL.

Alexander Kirillov wrote:

    In my opinion, a reasonable compromise would be: 

This is not a compromise in the sense that he meant, because there's
nothing to compromise with.  But it seems like a reasonable plan, for
documents that are always distributed as part of a particular software
package:

     -a to include a copy of FDL with every package distributed with GNOME
      - as a plain text file similar to COPYING. I am not sure if it is
      technically feasible to force the installation not to install it if
      there is already a copy coming from other package - it can lead to
      all kinds of problems, for example when you remove one package whil
      leaving the others.

       Note that GDP handbook is not distributed as a GNOME package, so I
       am not sure how this applies to it.

     - include one copy of FDL in DocBook or HTML  format in one of the core GNOME
       packages, e.g.  gnome-core or the forthcoming gnome-user-docs

     - change the wording of the legalinfo to mention that FDL is included
       as a text file in the source of the package, and also for
       convenience provide the link to <help:fdl> (which should bring up
       the DocBook version if the appropriate package is installed)

On the other hand, major manuals that someone might imagine printing
as a book should always contain their own copy of the GFDL.  Since
they are generally large, this extra copy of the GFDL won't amount to
much in terms of wasted space or effort.