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Re: [OctDev] Clarification about PDF file license



On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:00:06 +0200 David Bateman wrote:

> Rafael Laboissiere wrote:
[...]
> > * 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.

I think it would be useful if you (David) clarified a bit how the PDF
file is compiled from which source files licensed under which terms,
since I am beginning to get lost in trying to follow this discussion!
Sorry!  :p

If I understand correctly, the PDF file is a manual compiled from
a .texi file, which, in its turn, is generated from a .txi file *and*
from a significant number of parts extracted from some .cc files.

 *.cc --------> \
                 |---> fixed.texi ---> fixed.pdf
 fixed.txi  --> /

The .cc files are released under the GNU GPL (which one? v2 only? v2 or
later? v3 only? v3 or later? ...).
fixed.txi is Copyright (C) 2004 Motorola Inc and released under the
license that has been quoted previously in this same thread (and is
GPL-incompatible).  But everything in fixed.txi is written by you
(David), and you have the permission from Motorola to relicense the
text as you wish.

Did I get it right?

[...]
> Isn't the above license GPL compatible?

I don't think so...

> 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.

If the situation may be described as I did above (in the "If I
understand correctly" part), then I think you could relicense the .txi
files under a GPL-compatible license and solve the issue once and for
all!

> 
> 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.
[...]

My usual recommendations are:

 * the GNU GPL itself, if you want a copyleft
 * the Expat license[1], if you don't want a copyleft on the text (but
please note that the resulting PDF file would anyway be covered by the
GNU GPL, because of the parts extracted from GPL'd .cc files)

[1] http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt


Once more: IANAL, TINLA, IANADD, TINASOTODP.
And by the way: thanks to David for his cooperative attitude!  ;-)


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