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Re: license & copyright patch to MELT for dual GPLv3+ & GFDL1.2+
On Wed, 9 Jun 2010, Mike Stump wrote:
> On Jun 9, 2010, at 12:11 PM, Mark Mitchell wrote:
> > The problem, fundamentally, is that when the FSF came up with a
> > difference license for documentation, that license -- whatever its
> > merits -- put "code" and "documentation" in two separate, unmixable,
> > buckets.
>
> Actually, why use GFDL for the reference documentation? Can we just use
> GPLv3 for it, and then the output is just GPLv3? This side steps the
> issue entirely. We can publish and copy GPLv3 code and fragments. We
> can modify and extend them. Doing that, would mean no conflict.
>
> If we do that, then I don't think the FSF enters into the picture?
The FSF would need to approve converting the manuals to GPLv3.
Personally, I think GPLv3 is a great license, better than GPLv2 and much
better than the GFDL (and better than permissive licenses for most code
other than some libraries). But you need to persuade the FSF that it's
better for the documentation (whether or not you call that documentation a
"manual"). Or perhaps at least for the internals manuals, which the FSF
is unlike to want to print and which contain a large proportion of the
text we presently want to mix with code (documentation of target hooks /
macros).
(Though changing just the internals manuals wouldn't help for
documentation of command-line options, and would require an ongoing
permission for GCC maintainers to move text between the user and internals
manuals if felt appropriate in a particular case. And one area we might
like to generate from code is shared between the user and internals
manuals: documentation of asm constraints, where there are doc strings in
constraints.md files, possibly out of sync with md.texi, that aren't used
for anything because of the need to resolve the license issue first.
Those doc strings have been there for several years.)
--
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com