[Fwd: MELT doc licensing issues.]

[Mark Mitchell]

Basile Starynkevitch wrote:

> What I did not entirely understood in the recent decisions about
> documentation & code is what bothers the GCC authorities (FSF or GCC
> Steering Committee). Is it to mix documentation written by hand
> (GFDL-ed) with documentation generated from GPL-ed code? Is it to
> produce GPL-ed documentation?

You cannot mix GFDL'd and GPL'd documentation because their licenses are
incompatible.  Period.

The FSF, as a policy position, does not want manuals to be produced
under the GPL; instead it wants them under the GFDL.  There's no
inherent reason a manual can't be GPL, and indeed the FSF manuals used
to be GPL, but the FSF has changed its policy.

> For MELT there could be a very simple solution. I could very easily make
> the generated meltgendoc.texi independent of gccint.texi by removing the
> @include meltgendoc from gccint.texi and then writing by hand a small
> meltint.texi file which @include-s meltgendoc.texi and distributing
> separately meltint.pdf from gccint.pdf

Yes, you could do this.  Per the statement that I posted earlier, if
meltint.pdf is more of a "cross-reference", or list of
functions/classes/etc., then the FSF doesn't consider it a manual, and
it can be GPL.  That would be easier than dealing with the generator
program.

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery
mark@codesourcery.com
(650) 331-3385 x713