GNU General Public License question

[reecegeorge]

hi there,

the project is to put together a beginners manual for knoppix

i want to modify a manual that was written for debian and released under GNU General Public License. its a bit strange because its not released under the free documentation license, just the software GNU General Public License. its at:

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/users-guide/users-guide.en.html

my question is about Progeny's copyright notice. if i do the modifications, how do i show that my work is based on progeny's original work?

its all a bit confusing, i looked at the GNU General Public License website with all their faq's but i am still left wondering.

can anyone show me a good example of how to legally modify a GNU General Public License document?

reece

[mabhatter]

typically, just keep their copyright line to show you referenced it and add your own above it to show the new work is by you. That's why on many "click-thru" screens you see a long list of credits. Being as its not the actual GNU documentation license, there shouldnt' be issues with invariants.[GNU documentation project allows you to mark sections detications, copyright, comments that CANNOT be specificly deleted] If they have their copyright on every single page or something you can probably get away with just one on the title/credits page.

I definately would not delete the other copyright notice though.

And yes, this question of balloning "notice" pages is a big topic on the license boards. On one hand, it's the way GNU works...not for money, but like in acadamia, for credit. So it's frowned upon to delete copyright notices...on the other hand, some people are creating excessive notices and that ties up space, and makes the documents unweildly to navigate/process. The Documentation group has tightened up what's allowed, but it's still hotly debated.

To answer your question, look at it like a college project...could someone accuse you of plagerism if you drop the notices....and go with that.

[reecegeorge]

yeh, they have licensed it under the software licence and not the documentation license. i guess this means i must also licence under software licence or can i change it to the documentation licence after i edit it?

really, i dont expect you to answer these question but you seem to know a lot about this stuff, if you can answer my questions, thank you very much, if not thanks for your last post.

im adding sreenshots too, i guess the developers of each program that i take a screencapture of need to be given credit too, or am i taking it too far?

reece