[sylpheed:34101] Re: Sylpheed FAQ revision 2.1 released

[Ricardo Mones]

  Hi Petr,

  You don't need to address me directly, I'm subscribed to the list.

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 07:35:00PM +0200, Petr Kovar wrote:
> Ricardo Mones <mones at debian.org>, Sat, 19 Jun 2010 21:51:49 +0200:
> > On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 03:00:44 +0200
> > Petr Kovar <pknbe at volny.cz> wrote:
> > 
> > > Sylpheed FAQ revision 2.1 released on 2010-04-14
> > [...]
> > > Or download it in a .tar.gz or .zip archive from:
> > > 
> > > https://sourceforge.net/projects/sylpheeddoc/files/
> > > 
> > > DocBook XML source files are available in the Project CVS repository,
> > > see:
> > > 
> > > https://sourceforge.net/scm/?type=cvs&group_id=20952
> > 
> >   Sorry for resurrecting this thread, but hadn't noticed until today when
> >   trying to update the sylpheed-doc Debian package: why the XML sources
> > have been not included in the release tarball?
> > 
> >   Removing them makes the tarball not to comply with its FDL license.
> 
> Thanks for bringing this issue up. Obviously, I'm not a lawyer and
> basically, I intended to decrease the tarball in size and also not to
> distribute files which are likely to be not of interest to the general
> public,

  Well, I understand that some people may not want the sources and just the
  binary and that you want to reduce some KB in the tarball. The usual is to
  distribute the sources in a separate -src package for those which may be 
  interested also in them :)

> that is as I was under impression it's OK and compatible with the
> FDL license to link to the source files (available in public CVS
> repository) from the generated files (i.e. HTML files, which in fact may be
> viewed per se as source files too, for what it's worth).

  In the package there's no README or any other file with such pointer
  to a -src package. And the HTML cointains just a pointer to the project
  page which also again shows the HTMLs again and links the SF.net home page.
  I'm neither a lawyer, but I don't think that counts as a pointer to the
  sources according the license.

> Thinking about this, look at e.g. binary Linux distributions, generally it's
> also enough for them to just link to the publicly available sources and they
> don't need to distribute the sources along with the binary data (and I
> believe it's also the case for documentation HTML/PDF/etc. files that have
> been generated from the XML sources).

  Exactly, but that's not happening in the latest release of the FAQ package.

> Do you have any reliable source that suggest to always distribute sources
> along with the generated files? Not to belittle your advice or anything, but
> I'm seriously wondering...

  Sorry, but I didn't write that. As the sources were distributed with the
  previous packages putting the sources back seemed the easiest to me, but
  if you want the the alternative the FDL offers (pointer to sources instead
  the sources themselves) you must be sure you comply with it. Obviously
  removing the sources only is not the way.

  BTW, the FDL also states you must "Include an unaltered copy of this License."
  and the copy on the HTML is not unaltered. Again, the usual is to include a
  LICENSE or COPYING text file in the package with the license.

  regards,
-- 
  Ricardo Mones 
  ~
  Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but 
  that's not why we do it.                            Richard Feynman

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