(Please cc: me on replies) The upstream source for the manpages has received permission from IEEE to include text from the POSIX documentation in Linux manual pages. Debian has not distributed the POSIX man pages because until recently the license prohibited modification.
The latest version (1.67, 20 May 2004) now allows modification, "so long as any conflicts with the standard are clearly marked as such in the text". Joey Schulze, Debian's manpages maintainer, thinks the need for clear marking may be a problem. I've attached the full text of the new license. The other sentence that caught my eye is "This notice shall appear on any product containing this material". Is putting it in /usr/share/doc sufficient? Does this now meet Debian's criteria for distribution in main? Thanks, --Andre
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and The Open Group, have given us permission to reprint portions of their documentation. In the following statement, the phrase ``this text'' refers to portions of the system documentation. Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form in the linux-manpages package, from IEEE Std 1003.1 (TM), 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX (R)), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between these versions and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html . This notice shall appear on any product containing this material. Redistribution of this material is permitted so long as this notice and the corresponding notices within each POSIX manual page are retained on any distribution, and the nroff source is included. Modifications to the text are permitted so long as any conflicts with the standard are clearly marked as such in the text.
