6.6 License Texinfo sources

Gnulib provides copies of the GNU GPL, GNU LGPL, GNU Affero GPL, and GNU FDL licenses in Texinfo form. (The master location is https://www.gnu.org/licenses/). These Texinfo documents do not have any node names and structures built into them; for your manual, you should @include them in an appropriate @node.

The conventional name for the GPL node is ‘Copying’ and for the FDL ‘GNU Free Documentation License’. The LGPL doesn’t seem to have a conventional node name.

Of course the license texts themselves should not be changed at all.

The recommended way to make use of these license files, consistently with current practice, is as follows:

• The code license (GNU GPL, GNU LGPL, or GNU Affero GPL) is usually present as a file in the top-level directory. This is true not only for the release tarballs, but also in the VCS repository. The file is typically named ‘COPYING’ for the GNU GPL, or ‘COPYING.LIB’ or ‘COPYING.LESSER’ for the GNU LGPL. The presence of this file fulfills a legal obligation; see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhyMustIInclude.

  To make use of the code license in your documentation, you may request one of the modules gpl-3.0, gpl-2.0, lgpl-3.0, lgpl-2.1, agpl-3.0, through a gnulib-tool invocation. Or you may copy the relevant Texinfo file directly into your VCS repository. Both approaches are equally good. The Texinfo file changes very rarely.

• The documentation license file (GNU FDL) is usually not present as a file in the top-level directory, because that would be ambiguous: When you use the GNU FDL, you need to specify the Invariant Sections, the Front-Cover Texts, and the Back-Cover Texts.

  To make use of this documentation license, copy the relevant Texinfo file (doc/fdl-1.3.texi) into your VCS repository. This makes sure that anyone who receives a copy of your VCS repository has also received a copy of the documentation license. In the documentation, also state what are the Invariant Sections, the Front-Cover Texts, and the Back-Cover Texts.

We recommend to place the licenses as appendices at the end of the manual, right before any indices. For the FDL, we suggest the following @menu entry:

* GNU Free Documentation License::  License for copying this manual

For any @detailmenu entries, we suggest the following:

Copying This Manual

* GNU Free Documentation License::     Copying and sharing this manual

And for actual inclusion of the FDL itself, we suggest the following:

@node GNU Free Documentation License
@appendix GNU Free Documentation License

@include fdl.texi