GPL works just great for documentation

Posted Jul 2, 2010 12:07 UTC (Fri) by njwhite (guest, #51848)
In reply to: GPL works just great for documentation by liljencrantz
Parent article: Two GCC stories

This seems like a good point, I hadn't really considered GPL for documentation, but I agree, it seems concepts like preferred format of modification are pretty clear in the case of documentation too, and are just as useful. Am I right in thinking that the Linux docs are GPL (I don't see anything to the contrary, though I didn't look hard)?

I'd be interested to hear someone weigh in on why it may not be appropriate.

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GPL works just great for documentation

Posted Jul 2, 2010 20:41 UTC (Fri) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

Depends on what "Linux docs" you are talking about.

The stuff under Documentation/ in your local kernel source is GPLv2
The manpages here state "GPLv2+ and GPL+ and BSD and MIT and Copyright only and IEEE"
The stuff on TLDP is GFDL 1.2 by default, but others apply to various parts
The book by our esteemed editor and others is Creative Commons Attribuution-ShareAlike 2.0

I'm sure there are countless others, going all the way from public domain to completely closed.