Elements of Style and the documentation-guide

[Paul W. Frields]

On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 16:18, Mark Johnson wrote:
> > Great idea. How about asking in the commons arena,
> > or the fdl licence group to find out just how
> > to interpret that licence?
> 
> You can also try <debian-legal at lists.debian.org>. I know there was a 
> huge thread on debian-devel (I think) not too long ago about some 
> non-freeness aspects of the FDL. In fact, IIRC, a new FDL is due any day 
> now that's meant to address some of these concerns. I believe it was 
> "due" June 1st.

There are definitely some legal pitfalls that are becoming apparent in
the current (soon to be "older"?) FDL. But nevertheless, I've been able
to discover thanks to your and Dave's direction that public domain docs
can be freely included in FDL docs without problems, as far as I can
tell. Public domain works are "free as the air for public use."

I would argue that you can't slap an FDL on it (and why bother anyway?),
because that puts specific restrictions on its use. However, there is no
reason it can't be distributed along with the other FDP materials,
without the FDL license and instead bearing a simple statement that it
is public domain material.

I should be able to handle the markup myself, but Dave, thanks for your
offer, and you'll be first one I'll contact if I can't complete it.

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE