Re: [OctDev] Clarification about PDF file license
David,
Sorry for the belated reply.
* David Bateman <David.Bateman@motorola.com> [2008-04-10 11:10]:
> There remains the same issue with the comms toolbox where a similar
> mechanism is used to build the documentation. For my code (a large part
> of this toolbox) I give permission to release the documentation of the
> code I'm response for under the terms of the license on the title page
> of the comms.pdf file.
Could you please sort this out with the other authors of the communications
package?
* David Bateman <David.Bateman@motorola.com> [2008-04-10 11:15]:
> Just a further question, if the documentation is distributed as part of
> the package itself under a GPL license then the only issue is the
> inclusion of the fixed.texi and/or fixed.txi file within the package
> tar-ball.
Yes, distribution of the source is a requirement of the DFSG (see item 2,
http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines).
> The documentation is delivered with the source files where the help strings
> are taken and so there is nominally no GPL violation in that case.
I am not a license expert and I have no idea whether including GPL code in a
non-GPL released documentation is okay. I think it boils down to making
sure the licensing conditions expressed in fixed.txi are compatible with the
GPL. For the debian-legal people following this thread, here are the
conditions:
Copyright (C) 2004 Motorola Inc
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire
resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission
notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual
into another language, under the same conditions as for modified versions.
> If its only the issue of the inclusion of fixed.{texi,txi} that is the
> issue that is preventing the packages inclusion in debian I have no
> objections to including these in the package tar-ball.
I think that including fixed.texi should be enough, even though it is
derived source. Including fixed.txi also will not hurt, although it cannot
be used to build fixed.texi from the tarball alone.
At any rate, you could slightly change the terms of the licensing terms by
adding that copy and modification of both source and derived forms of the
documentation are allowed.
--
Rafael
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