Re: Using the GFDL properly

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

* Richard Stallman (rms gnu org) wrote at 23:46 on 13/09/00:
> 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)

I like the above proposal. You could install the GNU FDL as part of gnome-core
in $(prefix)/share/gnome/help/fdl/C/fdl.sgml (or whatever) and then just link
to it. In fact, you may want to install it in gnome-libs and not gnome-core
(apps can depend on 'just' gnome-libs and not gnome-core (for example - say
somebody installed Nautilus and gnome-libs (but not gnome-core) they would no
longer be able to view the FDL license)).
 
> 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.

Regards,
Ali