Hello Wez,
There are only two cases (AFAIK) that apply to external documentation
being inserted into the manual. The first case is the ZE1 API doc.
They properly reassigned the copyright to the PHP Doc team and
understandably required attribution for doing so. This was done to
their liking. The second example is the topic at hand. This was done
improperly as you inserted copyrighted information into the PHP
Manual. This was not discussed or properly evaluated by peers and was
simply committed. There was no precedence for doing so and no
previous discussions allowing it so it was (and is) wrong. I am sorry
this was not documented but outside copyrighted information exists
nowhere else here and I think that is good and intentional. This does
not have to do with credits. People who contribute are credited but
are not given copyright to parts of the manual, and how to do this is
known but not part of this discussion. Bottom line there: we do not
add <author> tags like this.
While fixing this the first stage was hastily completed but the
authors were going to be added elsewhere despite your comments. In
discussion with fellow members in IRC, we generally agree that the
commit should be reverted until we discuss it with the authors and
IBM. But the point here (of mine at least) is for the manual to own
full copyright to everything that lives in the phpdoc CVS module. So:
1. We revert the commit in question
2. Discuss with the authors and IBM about transferring copyright
3. Tell the authors how we do credits, and fix
If a transfer of copyright is not allowed then we remove this entire
set of documentation from the manual. The manual must not contain
copyrighted information from other parties and I am firm in this
regard and already stated reasons why this is the case. Attribution
yes, copyright no. Thankfully this problem has only occurred once.
How to add companies as contributors is being thought about at this
time. Whether to add them within the contributors list or appended
separately is being debated. Whatever the case we should credit IBM
and Zend (and future companies) all the same and in a similar fashion
to human volunteers.
Regards,
Philip
