doxygen, GPL incompatibility of FDL, and the horror

doxygen, GPL incompatibility of FDL, and the horror

[Nathanael Nerode]

Just realized that the doxygen docs in libstdc++-v3 are under the FDL.  
The files they take information out of are under the GPL.  This is 
legitimate only because the FSF owns the copyrights and can release them 
under any damn copyright it likes. :-/  

This appears to make the following scenario illegal for anyone who 
hasn't assigned all their copyrights to the FSF (or indeed someone who 
has, but doesn't have the FSF's permission to modify copyrights)
* I modify the doxygen comments.
* I rerun doxygen.
* I distribute the resulting documentation.

Gah!

On the more immediate note, anyone who contributed any doxygenated text 
to libstdc++-v3 is a contributor to the manual, and according to RMS, if 
they don't have a post-January 2000 copyright statement, we shouldn't 
use their work, which means we can't rerun doxygen.

Gah!

[I hate the FDL more and more...]

--Nathanael

Re: doxygen, GPL incompatibility of FDL, and the horror

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Sat, 24 May 2003, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> This appears to make the following scenario illegal for anyone who
> hasn't assigned all their copyrights to the FSF (or indeed someone who
> has, but doesn't have the FSF's permission to modify copyrights)
> * I modify the doxygen comments.
> * I rerun doxygen.
> * I distribute the resulting documentation.
>
> Gah!

Does the libstdc++ docs contain invariant sections?

> On the more immediate note, anyone who contributed any doxygenated text
> to libstdc++-v3 is a contributor to the manual, and according to RMS, if
> they don't have a post-January 2000 copyright statement, we shouldn't
> use their work, which means we can't rerun doxygen.

> Gah!
>
> [I hate the FDL more and more...]

Would you mind raising this with RMS himself?  RMS Cc:ed
moglen@columbia.edu on bkuhn@gnu.org relevant mails, so you
might consider doing the same.

Gerald
-- 
Gerald "Jerry"   pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at   http://www.pfeifer.com/gerald/

Re: doxygen, GPL incompatibility of FDL, and the horror

[Mike Stump]

On Saturday, May 24, 2003, at 07:30 PM, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> Just realized that the doxygen docs in libstdc++-v3 are under the FDL.
> The files they take information out of are under the GPL.  This is
> legitimate only because the FSF owns the copyrights and can release 
> them
> under any damn copyright it likes. :-/
>
> This appears to make the following scenario illegal for anyone who
> hasn't assigned all their copyrights to the FSF (or indeed someone who
> has, but doesn't have the FSF's permission to modify copyrights)
> * I modify the doxygen comments.
> * I rerun doxygen.
> * I distribute the resulting documentation.
>
> Gah!
>
> On the more immediate note, anyone who contributed any doxygenated text
> to libstdc++-v3 is a contributor to the manual, and according to RMS, 
> if
> they don't have a post-January 2000 copyright statement, we shouldn't
> use their work, which means we can't rerun doxygen.

If I understand this correctly...

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.

Essentially what the FSF blesses is the idea that certain bits of the 
GPL source are also under another license (FDL), and that one is 
permitted to so convert these bits into stand alone content (a set of 
html pages for example), and that content is FDL covered.

Informally, I think that this really is a non-issue, but, because it 
touches legal things, it does really need to be discussed with the FSF 
and proposed and accepted and documented for all to understand.  Thanks 
for bringing it up.

Re: doxygen, GPL incompatibility of FDL, and the horror

[Joe Buck]

On Saturday, May 24, 2003, at 07:30 PM, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> > Just realized that the doxygen docs in libstdc++-v3 are under the FDL.
> > The files they take information out of are under the GPL.  This is
> > legitimate only because the FSF owns the copyrights and can release 
> > them
> > under any damn copyright it likes. :-/

On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 12:28:44PM -0700, Mike Stump wrote:
> If I understand this correctly...
> 
> 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.

We're discussing this issue right now on the SC list with RMS, as part of
a more general GFDL discussion.

Re: 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