On 1/9/07, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Rory Stolzenberg wrote:
On 1/8/07, mwookie peter@iriselements.com wrote:
- If I include several paragraphs from the text in my website, does my
entire site need to be licensed under the GFDL or just that page, or
just
the "text" versus the layout, links, etc.?
- None of the text you write yourself has to be under the GFDL, only
the
text that you quote.
I don't think that's quite true. The GFDL says, in section 1:
A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.
And in section 4 ("Modifications"):
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License . . .
Thus, a work, such as a web page, containing portions of a GFDL work must generally in itself be licensed under the GFDL.
Section 7 ("Aggregation with independent works") does, however, say:
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
However, it's not entirely obvious at what point a document ceases to be "independent". Certainly the pages of a web site can, in most cases, be considered independent documents, but it's not at all clear to me whether a distinct section of a single web page, like what you have on your site, can in fact be considered an independent document.
If you do wish to stand by the claim that it can, I believe your case would be strengthened by making sure that the section in question in fact makes sense even if taken off the page; in particular, it should probably carry a title of its own, so that someone reading the section out of context will still be able to tell what it is about.
-- Ilmari Karonen
If he's clearly showing that he's quoting text from another source, I don't think that would be considered part of the document, rather it would be an aggregate work. If he made the GFDL text very much a part of the text he writes, then I agree that it would probably require the entire thing to be GFDL. However, I get the impression that he doesn't intend to do that.