doxygen, GPL incompatibility of FDL, and the horror

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Tue, 27 May 2003, Mike Stump wrote:

> Docs are generated from GPL source.  We want the generated docs to be 
> covered by some other copyright.
> 
> Solution, have the FSF officially bless this and then document it as a 
> blessed transformation.

There may also be a use for having some cases of the converse blessed in
future: GFDL manual used as source for generated code (keeping the
specification of options the compiler accepts, and the --help output, in
magic comments in the manual alongside the full documentation, to minimise
the number of places to be changed to add an option and force
documentation to be added when options are added).  But the requirements
of source in the GPL mean that either the magic comments themselves or the
whole relevant manual files would need to have GPL dual licensing; it
wouldn't be enough for only a generated non-source file to be under the
GPL.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk