Re: DISTRIB file vs. Emacs manuals and GFDL

[David Kastrup]

address@hidden (Kim F. Storm) writes:

> The file etc/DISTRIB explains that emacs software is licensed under GPL
> and refers to etc/COPYING.
>
> Now that an emacs distribution includes the manual and lisp reference,
> I think DISTRIB should mention that the documentation is covered by a
> different license, and give a pointer to that license?

>From the GPL

2b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
    whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
    part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
    parties under the terms of this License.

Since "to be licenced as a whole [...] under the terms of this
licence" would be binding to every redistributor, we can't declare
manual and Lisp reference to be part of Emacs.  The linkage via things
like C-h F into the manual is not to be considered creation of a
derived work.

We have to make clear that the Emacs manual, the Lisp manual, the
Elisp tutorial and everything else covered by the GFDL are not to be
considered part of Emacs as a whole, or people won't be able to
redistribute Emacs at all due to GPL 2b.

The Emacs tutorial currently ends with:

    This version of the tutorial, like GNU Emacs, is copyrighted, and
    comes with permission to distribute copies on certain conditions:

    Copyright (c) 1985, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation

       Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
       of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
       copyright notice and permission notice are preserved,
       and that the distributor grants the recipient permission
       for further redistribution as permitted by this notice.

       Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
       of this document, or of portions of it,
       under the above conditions, provided also that they
       carry prominent notices stating who last altered them.

As far as I can see, it might be GPL-incompatible as well, since "the
distributor grants the recipient permission for further redistribution
as permitted by this notice" appears to me to be in conflict with
distributing under the conditions of the GPL "as a whole".

So it would probably be necessary to mention that the tutorials are
not considered part of Emacs as a whole, too.

Anybody have a better idea?  I remain of the opinion that we have some
sort of a problem here.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum