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Date:      Sun, 27 Jul 2008 01:50:08 +0000
From:      "Lorenzo E. Danielsson" <danielsson.lorenzo@gmail.com>
To:        freebsd-doc@freebsd.org
Subject:   "Modified" FreeBSD Documentation License?
Message-ID:  <1217123408.20577.27.camel@etna.vulcan.net>

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Hello list,

First of all, I am sorry if this is the wrong list for this message. I
was looking for something like freebsd-legal, but couldn't find one.

I am a part of a small group of people working on some documentation,
mostly related to programming. Much of it is not even related to FreeBSD
at all. We have been looking through documentation licenses, and all
decided that we like the FreeBSD one, because it's simple and
straight-forward. We are not lawyers. We just want a simple license that
grants people the right to use the documentation and to modify it.

But, for certain reasons we are not able to use DocBook SGML (not that I
have anything against it). Instead we will use a combination of Latex
and Open Document Format (ODF). This leads me to a few questions that I
hope somebody can answer.

I have Googled around quite a bit, but haven't really been able to find
any conclusive answers.

1. If I modify the license text to read for instance "Latex" instead of
DocBook SGML, is it valid to still call the license FreeBSD
Documentation License, or do I need to avoid that name?

2. Regarding the ODF documents: is it valid to consider documents
written in a tool like OpenOffice.org a "source" format?

3. Suppose we go one step further and change the copyright notice to
state the author's name instead of "FreeBSD Project" as well as "..
PROVIDED BY THE FREEBSD DOCUMENTATION PROJECT" to .. PROVIDED BY
<AUTHOR>", is it still valid to call the license "FreeBSD Documentation
License"?

I guess what I'm trying to find out is if the documentation license is
"re-usable" in the same way that the BSD license is usable outside of
the BSD Project itself. Does this make sense? I have zero legal
background.

If this is totally off-topic, could somebody point me to where I can get
more information? I'm not currently on the list, so could I also be CCed
on any reply?

Lorenzo




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