Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > This is why the GFDL does not require "complete corresponding source > code" for a published manual. It's easier to change the manual if you > have this, but no disaster if you don't: you just have to write your > own mark-up, which is pretty straightforward. The requirement for a > transparent copy is so that you don't have to keyboard the whole text > again in order to publish a modified manual. Even that is not > impossible, but it's a bigger pain than writing mark-up afresh.
I'm not sure I agree with this. In many cases it is probably cheaper to get someone to OCR or type in the plain text than to typeset it to the original standard, given the plain text. I admit that the following isn't directly relevant to manuals or documentation, but in some cases, such as a bilingual dictionary, the mark-up can be very complex and non-trivial to reinvent. I'm currently working on a bidirectional dictionary where both directions are derived from the same source data using a Perl script that is already hard to understand and I still have to add some features. I might release the whole lot under the GPL. I wouldn't want to release it under the GFDL.
