Copyright (FD-DOC)

I would recommend that all FD-DOC HOWTO documents come with an explicit copyright. This makes it much more difficult for someone else to come along and try to claim your work as their own. An explicit copyright statement, and copy policy, also gives you a legal leg to stand on should you ever find that your rights have been invaded.

The Linux HOWTO Project has a suitable copyright statement, which I recommend the FD-DOC project adapt for its own use. The following is the form that I feel is suitable to FD-DOC:

Copyright © yyyy name of author

Unless otherwise stated, FD-DOC HOWTO documents are copyrighted by their respective authors. FD-DOC HOWTO documents may be reproduced and distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic, as long as this copyright notice is retained on all copies. Commercial redistribution is allowed and encouraged; however, the author would like to be notified of any such distributions.

All translations, derivative works, or aggregate works incorporating any FD-DOC HOWTO documents must be covered under this copyright notice. That is, you may not produce a derivative work from a HOWTO and impose additional restrictions on its distribution. Exceptions to these rules may be granted under certain conditions; please contact the FD-DOC HOWTO coordinator at the address given below.

In short, we wish to promote dissemination of this information through as many channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright on the HOWTO documents, and would like to be notified of any plans to redistribute the HOWTOs.

If you have any questions, please contact the FD-DOC coordinator at jhall1@isd.net.

You may translate the copyright message, but please include the English version too. Make a note in the translated copyright message that the official copyright is the English version. We do this in case some legal fine point doesn't come out so clearly in the translation.