Hi,
....
1) I am working on the updating of the manual of this application that
is GFDL licensed (and released as HTML).
2) There is an original author, the document is copyrighted to him
3) A few chapter have been added by individuals and such chapters are
copyrighted to their respective authors
4) The whole thing has been rewritten/updated at least 3 times without
explicit mention of modifications inside the source
5) Translations have been made and are similarly licensed and the
copyright remains to the original authors, with reference to the
translator
6) A fork is using this documentation as is, without even identifying
what has been removed (reference to the original application for ex)
*sigh* seems, that the document is not in line with it's own license.
etc...
My idea would be to either put the whole thing under one copyright
(eventually original author, or the development project as a whole:
OmegaT Project, a Source Forge project)
No, you may not change copyright!
See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt, 4 Modifications, point D
and/or to add a legal notice that could not be removable and that
indicates what is the manual's original purpose.
This may be done, using the FDL. You can define a "invariant section"
and mention this in the license notice. It's written in the FDL text,
how to do so.
What is the status of OOoAUthors's documentations in terms of
copyright/translations/modifications and do you have any advice to
give me for my specific document ?
Well .. not speaking for OOoAuthors and I'm not a licensing expert. But
the best thing, you could do is to try to get the doocument to a status,
so that it fits to it's own license. That means .. mention all copyright
notices, attach a clear license notice and define a invariant section,
so that the original purpose of the manual gets clearer.
André
