Licensing information is not stated / linked from the docs "preview" website

[Fabián Rodríguez]

The Ubuntu Documentation preview web site at http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ does not have clear licensing information. This also affects all of its subpages, which are currently referenced by and rank high on search engines. As such, they are bound to be referred by other sites and result in further unlicensed works.

Because it derives from the wiki, the preview website and all of its subpages should state the same licensing, by linking to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/License.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

To be honest, I don't think that's true. Each document has a clear link to its license on the top (e.g. the link to http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/about-ubuntu/C/ln-legal.html) , as is the case with the documents as installed in the help system.

Why do you think that is insufficient?

[Fabián Rodríguez (magicfab)]

Actually, if you look at the docs preview site as a tree, the "leaves" don't have such links. An example:
http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/about-ubuntu/C/about-linux.html

Such documents are most likely to contain the actual documentation (rather than ToCs) and be linked to or be the origin of derived contents.

Maybe just adjusting the web template (footer ?) would be enough to make sure every single page has that information (just as the wiki does).

[Matthew East (mdke)]

Hi,

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 4:29 PM, Fabián Rodríguez <email address hidden> wrote:
> Actually, if you look at the docs preview site as a tree, the "leaves" don't have such links. An example:
> http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/about-ubuntu/C/about-linux.html

It's true that each subpage of a document doesn't have a link to the
license, but I don't think that's necessary: it's enough that the
first page of each document does, surely?

> Maybe just adjusting the web template (footer ?) would be enough to make
> sure every single page has that information (just as the wiki does).

That means that if a particular document has a different license, the
footer will be wrong... At the moment we don't have such a document,
but we have done in the past (e.g. Documentation Team Style Guide,
Ubuntu Packaging Guide) and may do in the future.

--
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

[Paolo (edgertronics)]

The reality is that the documentation should really be considered one collective document, and so one statement of license covers all content therein there is no need to link from every page.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

Licensing information is now in the page footer for all Ubuntu documentation pages on doc.ubuntu.com: http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/index.html