Re: Guidlines and Skeletons for Epiphany Help Documentation

[Alexander Kirillov <kirillov math sunysb edu>]

On Wed, 2003-05-07 at 10:06, Pat Costello wrote:
> > 
> > <snip/> 
> > 
> > Thanks for the comments Pat I'm going to integrate them into the docs right 
> > away. For the most part I'm trying to cut and paste as much documentation 
> > from existing gnome docs as possible, so that I can avoid terminology and 
> > consistency issues. One question I do have is about gfdl. Do i need to add 
> > the original copyright owners of the documentation I've cut and pasted from 
> > to the epiphany copyright holders? 
> > 
> 
> Dave, 
> 
> When cutting-and-pasting from one GNOME document to another came up in the past, 
> we settled on using an Acknowledgement section in the front matter as the best 
> way to give due credit. Under the GFDL, you only need to add copyright credits 
> for previous contributors to the document in question. Seeing as the Epiphany 
> User Guide is a new document, then there can be no previous copyright holders 
> for that document. 

Well, it is not quite correct. By GFDL, any use of the document other
than copying the whole doc unchanged is called "modifying", so
cut-and-paste falls under "modifying a document", too. Thus when you
create a new document by borrowing pieces from existing docs, according
to GFDL, the document you created should be considered a "modified
version" of the original docs, so legally, you have to include the
previous authors. 

But I agree: legalities aside, the most reasonable way would be to
include an "Acknowledgments" section. To be legally clean, you might
want to ask original copyright holders if they agree to that - if they
do, then you are fine.  I do not think anyone would object...


> Therefore, you are safe to give the appropriate credit in an 
> Acknowledgement section. If the cut-and-pastes are neat enough, you should 
> indicate in the Acknowledgements section, where you got the various items of 
> information from. 
> 
> I vaguely remember talking with Irene about creating an Acknowledgements section 
> for use in the standard templates, but I can't remember any more than that. 
> Irene - if you are following this thread, does this ring a bell? 
> 
> Pat
> 
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