Hello, I hope you can help with some ideas and also clear a few of my questions. I'm not a lawyer, so I hope, you can give a few hints. I'm writing manpages for the proprietary ATI driver, which are included in the Debian package. You can find the source here:
http://cvs.wgdd.de/cgi-bin/cvsweb/fglrx_man/ At the moment the sources miss a license statement. More about the manpages can be found at Flavios fglrx mailing-list. http://www.stanchina.net/~flavio/debian/fglrx-archive/msg00925.html http://www.stanchina.net/~flavio/debian/fglrx-archive/msg01017.html 1) One thing I'm not sure about is, which license I should use, and if I maybe clash with the ATI license. So what do you think about the latter issue? Am I allowed to release the manpages under a free license or do I need permissions from ATI or do I need to give ATI a partial copyright or ...? To write the fglrx(4x) manpage I used information I found in http://www2.ati.com/drivers/firegl/readme0325.txt. Now this file states: /--------------- > Please read the entire contents of this document. Information in this > file may not appear in printed documentation or online help. \--------------- Does it mean, that I'm not allowed to use this information? How do you interpret this phrase? 2) I want to release them under a free license and therefor I plan to choose a license, which is based on the FreeBSD documentation license. It would read: /--------------- > Copyright (C) .... > > Redistribution and use in source (XML DocBook) and 'compiled' forms (SGML, > HTML, PDF, PostScript, RTF and so forth) with or without modification, are > permitted provided that the following conditions are met: > > 1. Redistributions of source code (XML DocBook) must retain the above > copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer > as the first lines of the file unmodified. > > 2. Redistributions in compiled form (transformed to other DTDs, converted > to PDF, PostScript, RTF and other formats) must reproduce the above > copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer > in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the > distribution. > > 3. Neither the name of the copyright owner(s) nor the name of any > contributor > may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this > documentation > without specific prior written permission. > > THIS DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS > IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE > IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE > ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE > LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR > CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF > SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS > INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN > CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) > ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF > THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. \-------------------- What do you think about this license? Is it DFSG-compliant? Can I apply it? Would you change parts (and if yes -> why?). One thing, I'm not sure about is the phrase "as the first lines". Normally the XML source will look like this /------------- > <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?> > <!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN" > "/usr/share/xml/docbook/schema/dtd/4.4/docbookx.dtd" [ > > <!-- > Document $WgDD: ...$ > Summary Manpage for the ... application. > > Copyright (C) .... > > ... license ... \------------- So does this also follow my own license, that the necessary information is printed in the "first lines"? Another question: Should I better add the Manpage-format to the list of "compiled" formats? Thanks in advance for any help. Regards, Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
