Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Is DocBook licensed?

[Michael Smith <smith at xml-doc dot org>]

Dennis Grace <dgrace@us.ibm.com> writes:

> Do the stylesheets and DTDs fall under any licenses?

They're 100% free software, meeting all the terms of the GNU Free
Software Definition, the Debian Free Software Guidelines, the Open
Source Definition -- meaning you're free to use them for any purpose,
modify them in any way you want, and distribute your modified versions,
without restriction and without needing to ask anybody for permission.

As far as specific licenses, the wording of the license distributed with
the stylesheets is pretty much the same as the MIT/X Consortium license.

I'm not sure whether the language of the license distributed with the
DTD is based on any existing license, but it seems like a shortened
version of the MIT/X Consortium license, without the advertising clause.
Regardless, it's definitely a 100% free software license.

> How about copyrights?  Does anyone hold copyrights on any portion of
> DocBook?

Both the stylesheets and DTD are copyrighted. But that's a good thing,
not a bad thing. It just ensures that anybody who redistributes modified
versions has to do it under the terms of the same 100% free-software
license the copyright holders chose, so it all stays free.

  --Mike