importing mans from others OSes

[Brooks Davis]

On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 07:27:40PM +0100, Harald Servat wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>   I've recently used the call backtrace[1] from the libexec (found in
> /usr/local/lib) library and I've found it very useful.
>   As it does not have (nor their relatives) a manual entry, I wondered if I
> could submit one for it. I'm not very skilled on writing manual
> documentation, and I've never submitted anything to FreeBSD but a port, but
> I'd like to try.

libexecinfo is from the port devel/libexecinfo so the base system isn't
relevant.  If we were to add it to the base the following responses
would apply.  As it stands, the author could choose to include a GPL or
APSL licensed manpage, but doing so would not be a step toward getting
the functionality into the base (perhaps in libutil).

>   As I have access to a Linux machine that has this manual entry[2], I
> wondered if I could use it as a base (or maybe copying it). However, as I
> don't want to start a BSD-License vs GPL-license war, I just want to know if
> it's permitted importing (using as a base, copying, ... or other
> possibilities that do not come into my mind right now) manual files from
> other OSes to FreeBSD.

There's no chance we'd allow a GPL based manual for a non-GPL based
function in the system.  We require GPL licensed pieces to be carefully
isolated and requiring that the documentation for a well integrated
piece of functionality would make no sense.

> Regards and thank you.
> 
> PS  Googling around, I've also seen that MacOSX has this manual entry[3],
> but it's not as good as [2]. Being MacOSX BSD-based, is the situation better
> to import it?

An APSL licensed manpage is basically no better better than a GPL
licensed one.  If this were in the base we'd require that a manpage be
licensed under the BSD license .

-- Brooks
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