srujan kumar wrote:
hello, I am srujan kumar , 18 years old and a student of computer science from india. I have planned to develop a website for my colleagues and other students of computer science from where they could get latest information on technology and some useful tips and tutorials for free.As i dont have a proper idea of GNU Free Documentation License, i want to check whether i can use the content from www.wikibooks.org in my website with some ads. If i can use, then what are the steps i should follow to put the content onto my website. please help me.
thank you,
sincerely, srujan kumar.
Hello Srujan,
I am glad that you have looked at Wikibooks, and I would encourage you to link to our website for the latest updates to Wikibooks material. This said, you are certainly free to use content from Wikibooks on your website without formal permission from us or the authors who have contributed to Wikibooks, as described in the GNU Free Document License. Please read that document for specific details.
The main thing that you have to remember when you use anything licensed under the GFDL is that you have to let anybody who sees this content know that it is available for them to reuse in other ways also under the terms of the GFDL, and that you ought to provide either a link to the Free Software Foundation website for a copy of the GFDL or provide a copy of this license on your website (preferred). Claiming copyright by yourself without mention of the GFDL is a violation of the terms of this license and a copyright violation as well.
You should also try to list as many of the authors of this content that you copy as is practical. The full legal implications of this are something of a public debate within Wikimedia projects, but at the very least provide their "user handle" on Wikibooks and their full name if you can reasonably find it. The GFDL says that you should list at least 5 of the most significant authors of anything you copy under this license. Neither I nor any active Wikibooks user can help you to define what exactly that means, but try to be reasonable and list those who have made a significant number of changes to the content. You can get this list of authors from the "History" tab of every Wikibook "module/chapter". There are also "Author" pages on many Wikibooks to help with this process of identifying key contributors to some of this content.
While not required by the GFDL, it would also be encouraged for you to link back to Wikibooks in some manner so those reading your copy can find the latest version. Or to at least acknowledge that you got the information from Wikibooks originally. This is just academic courtesy that you should do if you republish content from any other textual source that you did not write yourself.
As far as using advertisements on your own website, you are certainly free to do that or republish this information even in a commercial manner. Again, the details of what you can and can't do are rather clear within the GFDL. For a legal document, the terms are rather easy to understand if you take the time to read them.
I hope this helps, and please let me (and others reading this mailing list) if you have any other specific questions.
Robert Horning