Samuel Thibault [off-list ref] writes:

Jonathan Corbet, le mar. 01 juin 2021 12:53:01 -0600, a ecrit:

quoted

I am concerned about one thing, though: the licensing of this document
is not GPL-compatible, which means we can't build it into the rest of
the docs.

? I see various GFDL-1.1-no-invariants-or-later documentation in
userspace-api/media notably, do they have such build restriction? What
is actually posing problem in the GFDL licence?

Those media docs are separate from the rest of the kernel
documentation.  Other than that, all FDL in Documentation/ was
dual-licensed, last time I checked.

The problem is that the kernel docs, when built, include a great deal of
code and text taken directly from the kernel source.  The built docs are
thus a derived product of the kernel and the result needs to carry a
GPL-compatible license.  I've spent some time talking with lawyers about
this, and they have confirmed that view of things.

This document should not have entered Documentation/ with that license;
had I known this was happening at the time, I would have raised a fuss.
As a standalone .txt file there is probably no legal problem, but that
changes as soon as you bring it into RST TOC tree.

quoted

What are the chances that we can get the authors to agree on a change to
a GPL-compatible license for this file?

I don't know about Collins' opinion on this, Cc-ing him with the latest
mail my archives know for him (which dates 2008...)

The copyright "the Speakup Team" is a more complex thing to look for.

Do you have a history of contributors to the file in its previous home?

I'm sorry to be obnoxious; I *really* want to see this document converted
and in with the rest.  But the licensing is something that we need to
get right.

Thanks,

jon