Subject: RE: LDP and FSF and coprights
From: Al Longyear <[email-masked]>
To: Linux Documentation Project writers <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 1995 14:59:41 -0700

Matt,

I gave some thought to this issue over the past weekend. I wish to share 
some of this with you.

It strikes me that you are concerned that companies like Yggdrasil will 
change your work and remove sections which they find commercially 
undesirable. That they would further print the documentation in such as 
manner as to have it appear that the documentation was written for their 
specific package only.

Am I correct?

If so, then I don't believe that this is a problem __as_I_perceive_it__. 
Richard Stallman made the statement a while back that having the 
documentation match the package is a good thing. I tend to agree with this. 
Terry Dawson made the statement that having to write the documentation from 
scratch for a new distribution is not good. I agree with this.

Consider that the documentation which you publish is patterned after the 
GPL. You have advocated this position in the past.

Part of the GPL is to permit the modification of the original program. I 
would even hazard to say that "most" of the GPL is written to permit the 
modification of the original. Otherwise, why would it go into so much 
detail as to say that you must make available the source material for the 
final document?

Then, if the documentation is modeled after the GPL, and if the GPL is 
designed to permit the modification, then it follows that the documentation 
must permit the modification.

If the document permits the modification then you can not limit the scope 
of the modification. You can say that "this section is not to be modified" 
as it would contain the author's identification and personal comments; 
however, to say that the document may only be changed by the author and in 
the next breath say that the document is covered under a variation of the 
GPL does not make sense.

I happen to agree with Terry about the issues. I feel that there should be 
a "Slackware installation and getting started". I feel that it should be a 
derivative of your work. I feel that you should get the major credit for 
it. I also, feel that there should be a "Redhat Installation and Getting 
Started", a "MCC Installation and Getting Started" and a "Debian 
Installation and Getting Started".

If you tried to merge all of the variations into one document, it would 
start to look like some of the instructions which I have for German 
appliances -- A little Spanish, German, Italian, French, English, Japanese, 
and Mandarin. Then the next page has a little Spanish, German, ...

It is most confusing. I would have preferred to have separate manuals. One 
is entirely in English. One is in German. One is in Spanish, etc.

Consider what happens when you have an operating system. Do you say "Well, 
this section does not apply if you use MCC but it is similar to this if you 
use Debian but not quite. The prompts that Debian uses are different and 
the answers are different, but they permit the same actions to be 
accomplished. Just follow the slackware notes but make allowances for 
non-slackware variations."

That is ridiculous. (I know that the document does not say this. It was a 
gross exaggeration to emphasize my point.)

So, from this perspective, I don't perceive a problem if someone wants to 
change the installation document to reflect the package, print his own 
copy, package a copy with the distribution, and ship the combined package 
to the users. Consider the user's perspective. The user would have the 
package and the documentation which truly reflected the distribution. That 
is a good thing. Adding instructions which are not applicable to code which 
the user has is only a source of confusion.

This does not mean that you should not publish the original "Installation 
and Getting Started" as that title under your own name as however you see 
fit. You still hold the copyright to the work. I just think that a tailored 
version of your document is a good thing as well.

----------
From: 	Matt Welsh[SMTP:[email-masked]]
Sent: 	Monday, July 24, 1995 6:00 AM
To: 	Linux Documentation Project writers
Subject: 	Re: LDP and FSF and coprights

Terry Dawson <[email-masked]> writes:
> I'm slowly altering my perspective on the issue and coming around to the
> idea that freeing the copyright on my documents might produce greater
> benefit for both myself and the community at large than would be realised
> by maintaining the situation as it is.

I absolutely convinced that making the docs more "free" is a good idea
for most people. I have no problems with it with respect to most of the
stuff that I write; I just fear problems with the I&GS.

What I intend to do is require all copies to contain a verbatim "Author's
Note" which disclaims bad advice, marketing hype, and other bad 
modifications
on the part of publishers, and also encourages readers to obtain the
"official version" (the one that I maintain) from the LDP FTP and WWW
sites. In this way readers will know that what they are reading is not
necessarily directly coming from me, and that they can get the "original"
document from a number of sources.