A fianco del problema delle licenze che regolano l'utilizzo, la copia, la modifica e la distribuzione del software, si pone quello delle licenze riferite alla documentazione. In generale, non si può mettere sullo stesso piano il software e i documenti scritti, dal momento che in questo secondo caso si può trattare della manifestazione di un'opinione, che come tale non può essere alterata.
Purtroppo, per quanto riguarda questo problema, non esiste ancora una «licenza» utilizzata e apprezzata come la GNU-GPL per il software.
In questa appendice vengono raccolte solo alcune licenze riferite alla documentazione tecnica, e in particolare viene mostrato come applicare la licenza GNU-GPL a un documento.
Copyright (C) <years> Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that the sections entitled "<name>" and "<name>" are included exactly as in the original, and provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that the sections entitled "<name>", "<name>" and this permission notice may be included in translations approved by the Free Software Foundation instead of in the original English.
The Request For Comments (RFC) documents are intended to have wide distribution. However, the copyright notice enclosed below must be observed (where <date> is replaced by the original publication date of the RFC in question).
1. Copying and distributing the whole RFC without any changes:
1a. The copying and free redistribution are generally encouraged.
1b. The inclusion of RFCs in other documents and collections that are distributed for a fee is also encouraged, though in this case it is a courtesy (i) to ask the RFC author and (ii) provide the RFC author with a copy of the final document or collection.
Anyone can take some RFCs, put them in a book, copyright the book, and sell it. This in no way inhibits anyone else from doing the same thing, or inhibits any other distribution of the RFCs.
2. Copying and distributing the whole RFC with changes in format, font, etcetera:
2a. The same as case 1 with the addition that a note should be made of the reformatting.
3. Copying and distributing portions of an RFC:
3a. As with any material excerpted from another source, proper credit and citations must be provided.
4. Translating RFCs into other languages:
4a. Since wide distribution of RFCs is very desirable, translation into other languages is also desirable. The same requirements and courtesies should be followed in distributing RFCs in translation as would be followed when distributing RFCs in the original language.
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"Copyright (C) The Internet Society (<date>). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implmentation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE."
Nel sito GNU, http://www.gnu.org si trova un documento interessante scritto da Michael Stutz, Applying Copyleft To Non-Software Information, che spiega in modo molto semplice in che modo si potrebbe applicare la licenza GNU-GPL a «informazioni» che non siano propriamente del software. In breve, si tratterebbe di utilizzare la definizione seguente:
<one line to give the work's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) 19yy <name of author>
This information is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This work is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this work; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
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Si veda eventualmente http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonsoftware-copyleft.html.