Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Savannah hosting requirements on documentation license

[Jing Luo]

I didn't want to reply until we have a RT ticket number for this thread, 
so that the licensing team won't need to merge tickets; here we go.

On 2024-10-12 12:16, Richard Stallman wrote:
> 2. Should we change this policy?  That question is harder.
> From what you've said
>
>     We already have many gnu and non-gnu groups in savannah
>     that use the same license for code and docs; and a documentation
>     licensed under GPL is certainly libre,
>
> there are already many packages that use a code license for
> the documentation.  (How many are there?  How many of them
> are GNU packages?)

I’ll defer this to Bob or corwin

> We recommend the FDL because that works better for distributing
> printed manuals.  But with many instances already of packages
> that use the code license for the documentation too, maybe
> we should decide that that is ok.

You mentioned "FDL..better for distributing printed manual": how about 
docs that are only distributed digitally, not printed? After all, most 
programs are not important enough to have the docs to be published in 
paperback, and a lot of docs are in the form of html, texinfo, manpage, 
rst, yaml, etc., and they are a lot like code rather than printed 
manuals. Not just nongnu packages on Savannah, it might even worth 
reconsidering the policy of requiring docs to be under FDL for GNU.

In the 90s people would want to buy a paperback of GCC reference manual, 
but I’m not sure it is still true today, and the copies that FSF shop 
sells are for GCC 3.x (or 4.x ?), very out of date. Maybe people 
buy/distribute it as a souvenir or a gift or something.

We also have a list of "other free books" that are libre but not all 
compatible with FDL: https://www.gnu.org/doc/other-free-books.html

Also, I just thought of another thing: if we say GPL is not compatible 
with FDL, does it mean that we cannot distribute the source code (GPL) 
and the manuals (FDL) together? If this is the case then I wonder if 
there are any GNU packages distributing them together.

--
Jing Luo
About me: https://jing.rocks/about/
GPG Fingerprint: 4E09 8D19 00AA 3F72 1899 2614 09B3 316E 13A1 1EFC

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature