Subject: Re: LDP and FSF and copyrights
From: Terry Dawson <[email-masked]>
To: Linux Documentation Project writers <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 1995 17:41:11 +1000 (EST)

> Users can modify all the software we redistribute; if they can't
> modify the documentation to describe accurately the modified software,
> they are effectively blocked from doing the responsible thing and
> documenting their work.
> 
> It can be very useful to adapt documentation to purposes that its
> authors did not anticipate.  Soon there will be a version of Mach that
> can use device drivers written for Linux.  It would be very natural to
> adapt the KHG to describe this, if its terms permitted modification.

Richard,
This message seems to have produced no feedback so I thought it time
I offered some.

I freely profess to have not given the copyright issue much thought and that
I am not terribly literate on the subject. I am personally grateful that
the GPL exists as I would not have the software to use that I use today
without it.

My only real concerns with respect to copyright are that people understand
from exactly whom the documentation they are reading has come, and to disclaim
against errors or omissions. Authoring documents such as the Linux HOWTO's
identifies that uthor as a source of information relating to the topic
for which they have written, and many authors respond to questions relating
to their documents. I am fully prepared to answer questions and accept input,
feedback and criticism for my own work, but I do not want to be doing same
for the work of others who have used my document as a base and modified it
to suit their purposes.

I think it would be a shame to see documents rewritten from scratch because
the copyright on the existing documentation wasn't flexible enough to allow
modification to suit.

I take it you would like to see the LDP material covered by the GPL vers 2.0
to suit the software it documents ?

Term/Condition 4 of the GPL version 2 specifies that a prominent notice must
be displayed with any modified file that clearly states who the file was
modified by and when. It does though not ask that the nature of the
modifications be stated. I am very much interested in receiving feedback and
new information for incorporation into the documents I author/maintain and
I would be very disappointed if all of this useful feedback were to end up
going to an author who had modified my document and redistributed it. Would
this mean that the onus would then be on me to locate parties who were
modifying the documents, obtain copies to feed those changes back into my
own distribution of those documents? In a project based on the loose
collaborative efforts that Linux has and is displaying I feel it important
that users have at least one source of documentation that they can rely on.
My view that the LDP is capable of providing this. Could you suggest a way
of resolving my concerns here ?

To meet the GPL what are the minimum requirements in terms of notification
of copyright in the document ? To include a copy of the GPL in each document
would significantly increase the size of the document.

I'm almost ready to convert the one document I am sole author of to a new
copyright, on the basis of the argument you present above. I will of
course have to negotiate with Matt on the other.

Terry