Jonathan Corbet, le mar. 01 juin 2021 16:18:46 -0600, a ecrit:

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.

Ah...

I've spent some time talking with lawyers about
this, and they have confirmed that view of things.

Yes, sure.

As a standalone .txt file there is probably no legal problem, but that
changes as soon as you bring it into RST TOC tree.

Yes.

quoted

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?

Checking more closely, it seems we have it. The detail is in
git@github.com:linux-speakup/speakup.git in ./doc/spkguide.txt, but that
seems relatively simple:

- The initial import of the file (bddef0d280cd) wears only the Gene
  Collins copyright notice.
- I made some changes and added my copyright notice.
- Christopher Brannon (now in Cc) made various changes and added the
  "the Speakup Team" copyright notice.
- William Hubbs (now in Cc) made some changes.
- Steve Holmes (now in Cc) added one sentence.

So we'd need Gene's, Christopher's, William's, and Steve's ack on adding
the GPL alternative to the GFDL-1.2 licence.

Samuel