Re: [Bug-sysutils] #sysutils

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > Not accepting documentation that is licensed under the offical
   > license for documentation is not acceptable in a GNU project.
   > That it is or isn't GPL compatible is not relevant, the GPL is
   > intended for source code while the GFDL is intended for
   > documentation.

   Well, it's totally unfitting for documentation, since it requires
   the entire license to be included in every piece of document.  Now
   explain to me how you'd make a manual page without having it grow
   20-30 times because of the included GFDL...

You need to include the license of the GNU GPL too for a work which is
GNU GPLed.  I fail to see your point.  Also documentation tends to be
in the 100 page range, so one extra page of the complete license isn't
that much.

   And having to dual license a code example in a manual page to make
   people able to use it in their code without violating the license
   is just insane.

I don't think it is particulary insane.  It is about as `insane' as
requiring a special execption for compiler output.  You could probobly
add a note like: All source code in this manual can be redistributed
and/or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
License, or (at your option) any later version.

Check with address@hidden first though.

   If you really feel it to be necessary, I will accept submissions of
   info pages licensed under the GFDL, since I won't touch them
   (neither as a developer nor as a user) anyway.  But the manualpages
   becomes *useless* with the GFDL blurb attached at the bottom.

The man pages need a copyright blurb even if they are licensed under
the GNU GPL, the GFDL blurb isn't that much bigger:

| Copyright (C)  2006  Free Software Foundation, Inc.

| Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
| document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
| Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software
| Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no
| Back-Cover Texts.

| A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free
| Documentation License''.

The last line could equally say `A copy of the license is available in
the gfdl(7) manpage.' or point to an URL.

   > By being a GNU maintainer you have agreed, post-fact, or
   > pre-fact, to follow the GNU policies.  If you do not like the
   > policies, you do not go and change them yourself, you talk to the
   > head of the GNU project to get them changed.

   So, would that be RMS?

Yup.

Cheers.