Re: updating templates

[Pat Costello <Patrick Costello Sun COM>]

Hi Dan, 

Thanks for your mail about the license. The Sun legal team say that at a minium 
clauses covering liability and warranty >>must<< ship with the documentation, 
ideally in the actual license. Richard Stallman was amenable to updating the 
license, but when the Free Software Foundation reviewed the situation, they were 
not keen on including new clauses into the GFDL, probably because they could 
envision different situations where the warranty or liability clauses need to be 
fitted to local conditions. The FSF suggested amending the existing license to 
allow for the concurrent shipping of liability and warranty disclaimers. The Sun 
legal team have accepted this suggestion. The Sun documentation team is happy 
with this strategy as well - providing we can use the separate title page 
approach. So, as it stands right now, the Sun legal team is doing a last polish 
of the  L 'n' D clauses, Richard Stallman is revising the GFDL, and I am trying 
to create a suitable title page that is acceptable to the community as well as 
Sun. All in all, I'd say we are making some progress with this issue.

I think we can incorporate the suggestions that you make into the title page. I 
only have the following responses to your suggestions: 

> 
> * 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.


If we strike the words Title Page from the top of the document, then the 
document will have the same title as the actual online Help manual. This could 
be confusing. I know that the title becomes long and clumsy with the words Title 
Page, nevertheless these words identify the nature of this particular document. 
Also, the GFDL defines and uses the term Title Page, see section 4 
Modifications, of the GFDL. If we strike the words Title Page from the actual 
title, then I would at least recommend puttin the words Title Page in a 
paragraph tag immediately under the 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?
>  

I don't really have an opinion about this question. I'd be happy with any of the 
above links at the bottom of the Title Page. Previous would be acceptable, 
because the only place that people should be able to open the Title Page would 
be from the TOC, therefore the Previous link would take people back to the TOC, 
which is the right thing. 

Pat


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> Subject: Re: updating templates
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> 
> 
> 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
> >