> On Fri, Feb 23, 2001 at 04:41:56PM -0800, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
> > > Since the PHP manual is under the GPL all people around the world think,
> > > they can copy it and publish it in printed form. This is also the thinking
> > > mostly all PHP Group and Documentation members. But the publisher have
> > > now the copyright and this can us protect from distributing the manual as
> > > usual. Copyright law is not GPL.
> >
> > The publisher cannot possibly have the copyright. The authors of the
> > documentation hold the copyright. I see nothing wrong with them printing
> > up the documentation. If there were to try to stop others from doing the
> > same, then we would have a problem. But until I see evidence of that I
> > don't see the issue.
>
> No, you have not gotten the point. If you as a author gets a contract with
> a publisher to publish your book, then the publisher holds the copyright.
> He has also the right to ask the author to update it and so on.
Only if I, as an author, sign over such copyright. Nobody has signed over
the copyright so it isn't their's.
> Have you looked close to the first pages of the mentioned books. There you
> will see a copyright notice from the publisher. Why I think it is illegal
> is, he don't have a contract with the original authors and the editors.
Sure, they have a copyright on their particular printing. They have added
things like cover art and other things. That's fine. That doesn't mean
they have the copyright on the contents and it doesn't mean they can
prevent others from printing similar books. The GPL is of course rather
vague on stuff like this. The intent was always to move the document to
the Open Doc license.
-Rasmus
