Re: updating templates

[Dan Mueth <d-mueth uchicago edu>]

Pat,

Is the main issue that Sun would like the actual Limitation of Liability
and Disclaimer of Warranty (LLDW from here forward) inside the GFDL?
(Note there is a similar issue with including the GFDL itself in the
document.  RMS agreed that shipping a single copy in the core GNOME
distribution and linking to it is adequate.)  Or is it that the Invariants
Sections in the GFDL isn't adequate for the LLDW?  What exactly is Sun
asking to be added to the GFDL?

The title page is looking nice.  A few comments:

* It appears that what we need is to require the LLDW be preserved in its
current form for modified versions of each document.  As such, I think we
need to declare it to be a Front-Cover Text, Back-Cover Text, or Invariant
Section.  I don't think merely putting it on the title page requires that
others preserve it.  We would need to include this declaration in the
Legal Notice section.

* The "Documentation Authors" section should be retitled "History" as
required by the GFDL.  It must include the document title, year, new
authors, and publisher.  I suppose we can list the GNOME Foundation for
the publisher for official GNOME docs, and probably Sun Microsystems as
the publisher for the version Sun releases.  This gets into a pretty fuzzy
area as to when a document is actually released and by whom.  We may in
fact choose to not call the transfer of documents from Sun to GNOME an
actual release and hold off until the next release of a given package and
then say the GNOME Foundation is the publisher and Sun is one of the new
authors.

* I think we should strike "Title Page" from the string at the top of the
page, which I believe should just be the document title.

* I'm assuming there isn't actually a "Previous" link at the bottom of the
title page, and that we may want to replace "Home" with "Contents".
Right?

Dan



On Wed, 31 Oct 2001, Pat Costello wrote:

> Some time ago, the Sun documentation team put forward a suggestion for a
> separate area for all the boilerplate type information, as Sasha says in his
> mail snip. As well as improving information accessibility for the user, this
> approach - essentially a title page - conforms to the GFDL requirements.
> However, there was an issue about liability and warranty that we needed to clear
> up. At the moment, all parties who contribute to GNOME documentation are exposed
> to legal action, due to the absence of such clauses. This is a potentially
> serious issue.
>
> Legal representatives from Sun have just completed discussions with Richard
> Stallman and with the Free Software Foundation to resolve the license issue.
> Whereas the FSF recognises the need for the liability and warranty clauses, they
> do not want to amend the GFDL. They suggest that the liability and warranty
> clauses accompany each piece of documentation. This requirement creates another
> benefit for having a title page, because it gives us a suitable place where we
> can put these essential legal clauses. Another benefit of the title page
> approach is that all of the purely technical information remaining in the manual
> is easier for translators to process.
>
> A sample of a proposed title page is attached. The legal text for the liability
> and warranty sections was written by a member of the Sun legal team. The concept
> of the title page is that a user can open the title page from a Title Page link
> that appears at the bottom of the manual TOC.
>
> Sun has already reworked a number of applet manuals as per the GNOME Style
> Guide, and we are keen to put our work back into the community, plus
> translations in nine languages. Now that the license question appears to be
> close to resolution, Sun is in a position to start releasing that documentation.
> If the Sun approach to the title page is workable for community usage, then the
> Sun documentation will be generally usable.
>
> Pat
>