Re: Automatically creating non-free manual pages
Hallo, On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 03:16:14PM -0400, Don Armstrong wrote: On Mon, 09 Jun 2003, Klaus Reimer wrote: D. J. Bernstein maintains a website with documentation texts but because all these texts are not licensed under a DFSG-free license it is not possible to convert these pages into man pages and put them in the *-installer/*-src-Packages. To remove confusion, could you please specify which license these manuals or texts are under and link directly to them on DJB's website? There is no license. At least I don't know where. I asked him, got no answer up to now. The only thing I know is that he told Adam McKenna (Maintainer of daemontools-installer and djbdns-installer) that he prefers to have the information available on his website so that it's always the latest information. He has distributed manpages with older version of his software but he has stopped to do so because of this reason. It seems ok to me, but I really can't even guess at it without actually looking at the license that the manuals are released under. If there is no license I think it's simply completely copyrighted. But I wonder what does that mean to me. Is a program which extracts these copyrighted texts from his website to create man pages still legal? Or is the distribution of such a program legal but the use of it is illegal? -- Bye, K http://www.ailis.de/~k/ [A735 47EC D87B 1F15 C1E9 53D3 AA03 6173 A723 E391] (Finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] to get public key)
Re: Automatically creating non-free manual pages
On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Klaus Reimer wrote: On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 03:16:14PM -0400, Don Armstrong wrote: To remove confusion, could you please specify which license these manuals or texts are under and link directly to them on DJB's website? There is no license. Hrm. Well, that usually means that all rights are reserved, and the works are protected under copyright law. Of course, since its on a webpage, copying for fair use is probably ok, so downloading it shouldn't be a big deal in countries which have a concept of fair use. If there is no license I think it's simply completely copyrighted. Yes, that's usually the case. But I wonder what does that mean to me. Is a program which extracts these copyrighted texts from his website to create man pages still legal? With the understanding that the following is not legal advice, I'd presume that such a program would still be legal, unless the DMCA could somehow be made to apply to it. Or is the distribution of such a program legal but the use of it is illegal? Assuming the use fell under fair use, it would be legal. It's definetly not legal for debian to distribute the man pages, but I don't think it would be a big deal for users to use such a program. [I'd be really surprised if someone couldn't get Betamax to apply to such a usage.] Don Armstrong -- Quite the contrary; they *love* collateral damage. If they can make you miserable enough, maybe you'll stop using email entirely. Once enough people do that, then there'll be no legitimate reason left for anyone to run an SMTP server, and the spam problem will be solved. Craig Dickson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu pgpR98pMaVNYu.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Automatically creating non-free manual pages
Hallo, On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 02:16:49PM -0400, Don Armstrong wrote: Assuming the use fell under fair use, it would be legal. It's definetly not legal for debian to distribute the man pages, but I don't think it would be a big deal for users to use such a program. What do you think about debian packages like daemontools-installer which could use such a program to create the man pages and put them into the resulting debian packages? As I understand this this is quite ok because the user starts build-daemontools to build the debian package with the non-free man pages and this package is not distributed by Debian. Is this correct? -- Bye, K http://www.ailis.de/~k/ [A735 47EC D87B 1F15 C1E9 53D3 AA03 6173 A723 E391] (Finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] to get public key)
Re: Automatically creating non-free manual pages
On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Klaus Reimer wrote: What do you think about debian packages like daemontools-installer which could use such a program to create the man pages and put them into the resulting debian packages? As I understand this this is quite ok because the user starts build-daemontools to build the debian package with the non-free man pages and this package is not distributed by Debian. Is this correct? That is my understanding as well. The end user should be protected under fair use doctrines (where applicable), and debian is protected because its actions are not facilitating copyright infringement (assuming fair use) or participating in infringement itself. Ideally, you would be able to get clarification from upstream about the license that the documentation is under, so they could be included directly with the package. Baring that, the installer approach should work and be legal. Don Armstrong -- I don't care how poor and inefficient a little country is; they like to run their own business. I know men that would make my wife a better husband than I am; but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to 'em. -- The Best of Will Rogers http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu pgphmtHuRKAvD.pgp Description: PGP signature
Automatically creating non-free manual pages
Hello, There are some packages in the Debian Distribution from D. J. Bernstein. (http://cr.yp.to/). Some of these packages (daemontools-installer, djbdns-installer, ucspi-tcp-src) don't provide manual pages for the binaries. D. J. Bernstein maintains a website with documentation texts but because all these texts are not licensed under a DFSG-free license it is not possible to convert these pages into man pages and put them in the *-installer/*-src-Packages. Now the idea is to create a program which can extract the documentation from these pages and put them in man pages. The build-* scripts from the *-installer/*-src-Packages can call this program to create the manual pages on-thy-fly and put them into the real packages (which are not part of the Debian Distribution) In this way these non-free manual pages are not distributed by Debian, they are created on-demand on the machine where the real debian package is created by using a build-* script. I think this is ok, because the build-* scripts are doing exact the same thing with D. J. Bernsteins source code. My problem now is to find a good note in these manual pages to make clear that this man page is not a part of the Debian Project and may not be distributed. My current approch is this: -- AUTHORS Written by D. J. Bernstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] This manual page has been locally created by Klaus Reimer's [EMAIL PROTECTED] djbdoc2man program and is not part of the Debian Project. The content of this manual page has been automatically extracted from D. J. Bern stein's documentation pages on http://cr.yp.to/. Please note that you may not distribute this manual page without permission of the original author. -- I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if this text is good enough. Also I'm not a native english-speaker so maybe this is not really good english. So I would be glad about improvements of the above text. -- Bye, K http://www.ailis.de/~k/ [A735 47EC D87B 1F15 C1E9 53D3 AA03 6173 A723 E391] (Finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] to get public key)
Re: Automatically creating non-free manual pages
On Mon, 9 Jun 2003 20:10:39 +0200 Klaus Reimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if this text is good enough. Also I'm not a native english-speaker so maybe this is not really good english. So I would be glad about improvements of the above text. The text looks good (native English speaker here), and I think it gets the message across fine. Might want to ask Mr. Bernstein if he minds, though. pgpQCvydakZ5r.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Automatically creating non-free manual pages
On Mon, 09 Jun 2003, Klaus Reimer wrote: D. J. Bernstein maintains a website with documentation texts but because all these texts are not licensed under a DFSG-free license it is not possible to convert these pages into man pages and put them in the *-installer/*-src-Packages. To remove confusion, could you please specify which license these manuals or texts are under and link directly to them on DJB's website? In just a brief survey of his site, I was unable to quickly locate the man pages and/or the license(s) they are released under. [SNIP] I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if this text is good enough. Also I'm not a native english-speaker so maybe this is not really good english. So I would be glad about improvements of the above text. It seems ok to me, but I really can't even guess at it without actually looking at the license that the manuals are released under. Don Armstrong -- I'd sign up in a hot second for any cellular company whose motto was: We're less horrible than a root canal with a cold chisel. -- Cory Doctorow http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu pgp9zeIP8WBwt.pgp Description: PGP signature
