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