[Buildroot] question about buildroot manual license

[Buildroot] question about buildroot manual license

[Waldemar Brodkorb]

Hi developers, 
I am reading the buildroot manual and it is nice to read.
I would like to add some documentation to my own buildroot derivate,                                                                                                                                      
so my question is, what license is used for your document?
I have not found any mentioning about a license of the docs,
I am not sure if GPLv2 (the license of buildroot) is applicable
for documentation.        

Is it enough for you, if I add something like this in the top
of the document:
"based on the buildroot manual. See http://www.buildroot.net for 
original authors."

best regards
        Waldemar Brodkorb

[Buildroot] question about buildroot manual license

[Thomas De Schampheleire]

Waldemar Brodkorb <mail@waldemar-brodkorb.de> schreef:
>Hi developers, 
>I am reading the buildroot manual and it is nice to read.
>I would like to add some documentation to my own buildroot derivate,                                                                                                                                      
Aside from the license question, could you give some more detail about this derivative? How is it different from vanilla Buildroot?

Thanks,
Thomas

[Buildroot] question about buildroot manual license

[Waldemar Brodkorb]

Hi Thomas,
Thomas De Schampheleire wrote,

> Waldemar Brodkorb <mail@waldemar-brodkorb.de> schreef:
> >Hi developers, 
> >I am reading the buildroot manual and it is nice to read.
> >I would like to add some documentation to my own buildroot derivate,                                                                                                                                      
> Aside from the license question, could you give some more detail about this derivative? How is it different from vanilla Buildroot?

To make a long story short, it started with buildroot 2 in 2005 as I
joined the OpenWrt project. I started working on porting the Linksys
Kernel differences to a new 2.4.x kernel.
https://dev.openwrt.org/browser/trunk/openwrt/package/linux?rev=209

In June 2006 I forked OpenWrt and started with FreeWRT.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060615170828/http://openbsd-geek.de/archives/224-An-open-letter-to-the-OpenWrt-community.html
In Juli 2007 I left the FreeWRT project for personal reasons.
In the middle of 2008 I started to work on a new project called
OpenADK, which based on FreeWRT svn. In May 2009 I started using
Git. 

I am still hacking on embedded Linux systems for fun. At the moment
I like to write some documentation about OpenADK, and the buildroot
docs seems to be a perfect start.

There are a lot of differences between buildroot and OpenADK, I will
add a chapter about it in the planned manual.

best regards,
 Waldemar

P.s.: sorry, that my mail got longer

[Buildroot] question about buildroot manual license

[Yann E. MORIN]

Waldemar, All,

On 2014-03-07 07:31 +0100, Waldemar Brodkorb spake thusly:
> Hi developers, 
> I am reading the buildroot manual and it is nice to read.
> I would like to add some documentation to my own buildroot derivate,                                                                                                                                      
> so my question is, what license is used for your document?
> I have not found any mentioning about a license of the docs,
> I am not sure if GPLv2 (the license of buildroot) is applicable
> for documentation.        

What makes you think GPLv2 is not applicable to the Buildroot's manual?

The license for Buildroot is GPLv2. Which means that everything provided
with Buildroot, unless otherwise specified in the files themselves or in
an accompanying license file, is covered by Buildroot's license. [*]

Maybe the GPLv2 is not the best license for documentation, but as long
as there is no other licensing terms for the manual, that's the license
that applies to Buildroot's manual.

[*] Note: the patches we cary against the different packages are of
course covered by the license of the package they each apply to, which
may or may not be the same license as Buildroot's. Refer to each package
licensing terms for the license of the patches.

> Is it enough for you, if I add something like this in the top
> of the document:
> "based on the buildroot manual. See http://www.buildroot.net for 
> original authors."

No, that's not enough. You have to respect the full terms of the GPLv2.
Which basicaly translates to providing, but is not limited to providing,
the following items:

  - the source materials (the asciidoc files in docs/manual are considered
    the sources for the manual),

  - the scripts used to generate the manual from the asciidoc sources (the
    docs/manual/manual.mk),

  - the copyright notices where they appear, intact, with your own
    copyright added if you did some substantial changes

Note: IANAL; this is not legal advice; consult a lawyer.

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

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