CentOS docs - Jul 2011 - CentOS 6 (and 5.6) doc on http://www.centos.org/docs

Hi documentation team,

As CentOS 6 is now being released to the mirrors, it would be a good 
time to think about putting the accurate documentation on 
http://www.centos.org/docs
Red Hat changed their documentation license in the past and they are now 
using the CC-by-SA license.
My own understanding (but IANAL) is that we can just share the 
documentation , and just linking back to upstream without modifying the 
documentation.
That would be easier for newer doc as every 'bit' that is CentOS 
specific should/would be in our release note wiki page for that version.

Read the "Legal Notice" section for example on that page :
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Deployment_Guide/index.html

As well as the CC-by-SA license here :
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

What are your ideas on that ?

Fabian

On Fri, 2011-07-08 at 19:01 +0200, Fabian Arrotin wrote:
> Hi documentation team,
> 
> As CentOS 6 is now being released to the mirrors, it would be a good 
> time to think about putting the accurate documentation on 
> http://www.centos.org/docs
> Red Hat changed their documentation license in the past and they are now 
> using the CC-by-SA license.
> My own understanding (but IANAL) is that we can just share the 
> documentation , and just linking back to upstream without modifying the 
> documentation.
> That would be easier for newer doc as every 'bit' that is CentOS 
> specific should/would be in our release note wiki page for that version.
> 
> Read the "Legal Notice" section for example on that page :
>
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Deployment_Guide/index.html
> 
> As well as the CC-by-SA license here :
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
> 
> What are your ideas on that ?
> 
> Fabian
  As a relatively independent project, it is not fair to expect the
upstream provider to bear the network load of serving their documents to
CentOS users.

  It is my impression that we could and should 'adapt' the documentation
by removing the upstream provider logos and other marks (as applicable)
and mark the documentation as CentOS documentation.  Obviously,
including references to the original document.  This would give the
CentOS project the ability to edit out the aspects that are specific to
the upstream product, such as the contract number during install.

  The most obvious downside is that any documentation updates released
by the upstream provider would have to be merged into the CentOS
documentation.

  The most obvious upside is that we could modify [our version of] the
documentation directly without submitting (though possibly also
submitting) bug reports against the original docs.  We would want to
release our modifications with the same CC-by-SA license so others could
use them as appropriate.

  I remember a short discussion, on this list, mentioning the change of
license a while back.