[GRASS-PSC] grass manual translations

[Hamish]

Helena Mitasova wrote:
> I got an interesting question - see below.
> I asked for more details, but when looking at the man pages
> there is only Copyright by GRASS Development Team and
> no license and no email who to contact in case somebody
> wants to use/distribute/reprint etc. the material.

The contact is the "GRASS Development Team". The email contact (if
there should be one) should be the -psc or -dev lists, but that is easy
to discover.

The GRASS module document license is the same as the rest of the
software distribution, ie the GPL >=v2.

> In fact the Intro pages don't have anything.

fixed in svn.

> Should we include Creative commons license for the manual
> at each page with a link to explanation of what CC means?
> Or should we protect the manual by a stricter license or copyright
> and provide contact to person who will handle the request?
> ( first option looks much better to me)

IMHO we should provide the entire grass .tar.gz release under a single
license. To do other wise would be a mess, especially since the header
sections of the module help pages are directly derived from the GPL'd
module source code. (GPL2 sec. 2b)

Other parts of the project can use different licenses as appropriate,
although for flexibility it would be nice to promote common licenses
and ask that copyright be given to the project so that content can be
used and relicensed around the project's deliverable outputs as needed.

The MediaWiki content has been licensed under the GNU Free
Documentation License 1.2.

The website screenshots have been licensed under the CC-Attribution
ShareAlike 2.5 license.

The website generally asserts copyright without specifying a license.

If copyright is asserted, but not license terms, it just means you have
to ask the project before you copy/modify/redistribute the content or
assume terms. That's not a bug.


[the fwd'd message]
> A few months ago i started making a translation of the Grass manual  
> and after a lot of changes I prepared a greek manual according to my 
> student needs.

It is unclear to me which "Grass manual" is being refered to.
The module help pages? intro pages? N&M's GRASS book? Programmer's
manual?

Regardless, this clearly sounds like a derived work.

> In the Greek manual I have allready referenced the grass manual but I
> didnt print it because i still dont have the right to translate the  
> english manual.
> Is there any way for me to print my book which is about Grass and  
> Qgis???
> I mean could I somehow take a letter from the Grass team in which  
> they will say that I have the right to print my book using as  
> basework their work in the english manual??

If it is the module help pages, then derived works are covered under
the terms of the GPL >=v2.


Hamish



      ____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better friend, newshound, and 
know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile.  Try it now.  http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ