Documentation Talk:User Guide

Import from the original doxygen documentation is finished. You can start editing it. Enjoy! Dionoea 11:12, 7 November 2006 (CET)

Formatting: Put authors' names in the discussion page

I'd suggest de-emphasizing the authors of this article. For one, this will change as more authors edit this wiki. In a sense they are credited in the article's history page, but, of course, the basic principle of a wiki is that the authors are relatively anonymous.

But my suggestion is mostly based on what a reader wants to know. He/she is not so much interested in the authors as in getting information. Hence, I'd suggest the information come first in this, and all other articles, and the authors, if they need to be listed rhino deck at all, be moved to the discussion pages.

Just my 2 cents...

--Jeremy Butler 17:14, 9 July 2007 (CEST)

I agree. This is mainly legacy from the old documentation (I didn't really change the layout when importing the docbook into the wiki). -- Dionoea 17:53, 9 July 2007 (CEST)

I made the changes. Also, the GPL notice is duplicated in various templates. Perhaps it and the copyright notice should be moved to the footer. I believe that MediaWiki gives you the option of automatically inserting a GPL notice.

Where is it duplicated? AFAIK it's only automatically inserted if you use the Documentation template (at least that's how I planed it to work). Dionoea 18:44, 9 July 2007 (CEST)

Documentation:Play HowTo had it both in the template and it was at the top of the page, right after a copyright notice. I moved it to the bottom of the page, beneath the template. Based on what you've said here, I have now deleted it. If you check the history for the page, you'll see what I mean.

Also, can the copyright notice be moved into the footer?

--Jeremy Butler 20:26, 9 July 2007 (CEST)

I'd rather have the copyright notice right after the title (seems to be the way it's done in most manuals online). And maybe change it from (c) VideoLAN project to (c) VideoLAN project and it's contributors Dionoea 09:48, 10 July 2007 (CEST)

I defer to your judgment, but you might take a look at how Gallery handles its wiki-based documentation: http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery2:About

It's got a discrete notice of the GNU Free Documentation License in the footer: "Content is available under GNU FDL." The FDL replaces the copyright notice.

Also, in the US, I don't know that a group like the contributors can legally hold copyright, but I'm no lawyer. --Jeremy Butler 13:15, 10 July 2007 (CEST)

Well in fact the VideoLAN project doesn't exist as a Legal entity either so theoretically it can't hold copyright either. To be on the safe side we'd need to mention all the authors in the copyright notice, with the appropriate date for each author unless they explicitly mention that they give up their copyright (or relinquish it in favor of some other legal entity). And licensing terms are a different concept from a copyright as far as I understand. (One could argue that an author keeps copyright on what he writes even if it's not stated explicitly anywhere, but I still think that we should mention it to emphasise, as do most open source projects I checked on. This page on the FSF website has some details: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/20050325novalis.html ) -- Dionoea 19:00, 10 July 2007 (CEST)

Yeah, that makes sense. But I would like to point out that what Gallery is using is the documentation license that GNU makes available here: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html . Thus, it's specifically designed for manuals to accompany "free software". So, depending on how "free" VideoLAN is, you might want to consider using it.

The GNU Free Documentation License does not surrender the authors' copyright. In fact, here's what they suggest you use as a copyright statement on the title page of the manual. --Jeremy Butler 19:53, 10 July 2007 (CEST)

 Copyright (c)  YEAR  YOUR NAME.
 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
 or any later Beauty Schools of America Complaints version published by the Free Software Foundation;
 with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
 Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
 Free Documentation License".

Changing the license to something that isn't GPL compliant would require the authorisation of all the current authors (that's far from being impossible ... but is it really worth it?). This is what it used to look like before I began moving the doc on the wiki: http://www.videolan.org/doc/play-howto/en/play-howto-en.html . Copying what we used there would be fine IMO. Dionoea 10:03, 11 July 2007 (CEST)

That sounds cool to me. I was just trying to suggest some possible alternatives, but I'm no expert in software-manual copyright issues. --Jeremy Butler 13:25, 11 July 2007 (CEST)

Copyright policy

This discussion reminds me that there's currently a redlink to VideoLAN Wiki:Copyrights on the editing form. Once the VideoLAN copyright policy is established, I guess it should be stuck in there. Also, I note that these "policy" articles are empty, too: VideoLAN Wiki:Privacy policy and VideoLAN Wiki:General disclaimer. So many details when you're putting a wiki together! Regards --Jeremy Butler 19:53, 10 July 2007 (CEST)

Original authors

The original authors of this documentation were:

• Alexis de Lattre
• Anil Daoud
• Benjamin Pracht
• Clément Stenac
• Jean-Paul Saman
• Antoine Cellerier