Re: Documenting Gnome apps with the GPL

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    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.

    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.