From: Paul V. <pa...@vi...> - 2004-02-19 02:28:22
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Hi Nigel, > When Firebird split away from Borland, were there any agreements on > how much info from the IB6 docs could be used in documentation for > Firebird? No. They didn't include the docs in the IPL package. We asked them several times if we could use those docs "as if the fell under the IPL". They never answered. > Percentages? No cut and paste (But manual typing allowed)? For copyrights it doesn't matter *how* you copy text. Whether you copy-and-paste or retype, as soon as it's more than a loose sentence here and there it's a possible copyright violation. All this goes for the text. The information as such is public, and we can use it. > Can we use the framework, but not the content(and come up with the > content ourselves?) The framework is a grey area, I think. Copyright laws protect everything that's unique in a work. Borland could argue that the document structure is a specific one that *they* came up with, and that the chance that someone else would *independently* come up with the same structure is close to zero. The more general the structure is (think of a reference guide with the functions ordered alphabetically) the less chance the author can win a copyright lawsuit if someone else uses it too. (Same goes for text by the way: try copyrighting "It's raining today".) Anyway, to be safe I would build my docs from the ground up. But of course you can learn from existing docs. See what their strong points are, and what can be done better. > It'd be just sooo easy to drag and drop...but it's very naughty! Actually Tilo and I have been doing that for months last year. But it was a DRAG and we decided to DROP it when it became clear that Borland just wouldn't give permission to publish our homework ;-) With hindsight, it has only cost us time. It just was the wrong track. > (PocketBooks are now continuing) > http://oc.aims.net.au/pb/fb/ I'll have a look. Greetings, Paul Vinkenoog |