Re: Documenting Gnome apps with the GPL

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    Then, all other GNOME packages and packages for misc. GNOME apps do not
    ship the GFDL and have their documentation link to the local copy shipped
    with gnome-core.

This doesn't satisfy the GFDL, because each app distribution has to
contain a copy of the license.  (More precisely, each manual or each
collection of manuals must contain a copy.)

It is ok if, on installation, each app replaces its copy of the GFDL
with a hard link to the standard copy, if that is present and
identical.  That would save space in the local installation, in the
normal case.

      This is a solution which is not GNOME-centric, so an entire
    GNU/Linux distribution could have just one copy of the GFDL
    instead of many.]

I believe Debian GNU/Linux avoids local duplicates of the GPL in the
way I described above.

    2) For HTML documentation on the web: The documents should link to a copy
    of the GDFL which is also on the web, preferably on the same server (ie.
    on www.gnome.org).

Just making a link to a copy of the GFDL somewhere is not sufficient
to carry out the requirements.  Each manual, or each collection of
manuals, must contain a copy of the GFDL.  When you make a collection
of manuals in HTML, it is natural to put a link to that copy in each
of the manuals.  But it is not the link that does the job, it is the
fact of being part of a collection which contains a copy.

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