Re: [OctDev] Clarification about PDF file license
Rafael Laboissiere wrote:
> 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?
>
There are many and so that might be a difficult option.. Perhaps we
should investigate further the solutions below..
> * 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).
>
Then I'll add the sources to the package and it'll be in the next
octave-forge release. I'd suggest adding the *.texi files as the perl
scripts mkdoc and mktexi from octave-forge then won't be needed.
>
>> 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.
>
Isn't the above license GPL compatible? If it isn't I don't think there
is an issue of change the license of this and the comms.txi file to have
a GPL compatible license. All text in the fixed.pdf file is mine and I
have the release paper work internal that would allow me to re-release
under a GPL compatible documentation license. As for comms.pdf the fixed
text from comms.txi is all mine and the rest of the text is taken from
the functions that are GPLed. So a GPL compatible documentation license
would fixed that as well.
So if the above license isn't compatible with the GPL what is a
compatible license as I see no issues in changing it to something else.
>
>
>> 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.
>
>
Can debian legal express the exact terms that you want to make this
acceptable and sure I'll make the change. Or alternative propose another
license. Looking at the GFDL I don't think it would be compatible with
taking text from GPLed code, as the requirement to supply the source
code is removed. Ideas?
Regards
David
--
David Bateman David.Bateman@motorola.com
Motorola Labs - Paris +33 1 69 35 48 04 (Ph)
Parc Les Algorithmes, Commune de St Aubin +33 6 72 01 06 33 (Mob)
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