View source for GNU Free Documentation License

{{Short description|Copyleft license primarily for free software documentation}}
{{Redirect|GFDL}}
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{{Use American English|date=September 2020}}
{{Infobox software license
| name            = GNU Free Documentation License
| image           = [[File:GFDL Logo.svg|160px]]
| caption         = The GFDL logo
| author          = [[Free Software Foundation]]
| version         = 1.3
| publisher       = Free Software Foundation, Inc.
| date            = '''Current version''':<br />November 3, 2008
| spdx            = {{Unbulleted list|GFDL-1.3-or-later
  |GFDL-1.3-only
  |GFDL-1.2-or-later
  |GFDL-1.2-only
  |GFDL-1.1-or-later
  |GFDL-1.1-only
  |(see list for more<ref>{{cite web|title=SPDX License List|url=https://spdx.org/licenses/|access-date=2021-06-24}}</ref>)
  }}
| Debian approved = Yes, with no invariant sections (see below)
| GPL compatible  = No
| copyleft        = Yes
}}
The '''GNU Free Documentation License''' ('''GNU FDL''' or simply '''GFDL''') is a [[copyleft]] [[license]] for free documentation, designed by the [[Free Software Foundation]] (FSF) for the [[GNU Project]]. It is similar to the [[GNU General Public License]], giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify (except for "invariant sections") a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially, but, if produced in larger quantities (greater than 100), the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient.

The GFDL was designed for [[User guide|manual]]s, textbooks, other reference and instructional materials, and documentation which often accompanies GNU software. However, it can be used for any text-based work, regardless of subject matter. For example, the free online encyclopedia [[Wikipedia]] uses the GFDL<ref>{{Citation|title=Wikipedia:About|date=2018-07-26|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:About&oldid=852074540#Trademarks_and_copyrights|work=Wikipedia|language=en|access-date=2018-09-07}}</ref> (coupled with the [[Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License]]) for much of its text, excluding text that was imported from other sources after the 2009 licensing update that is only available under the Creative Commons license.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Licensing_update|title=Wikipedia:Licensing update|date=2009-06-14|quote=With the transition, the Wikipedia community will now be allowed to import CC-BY-SA text from external sources into articles. If you do this, the origin of the material and its license should be explicitly noted in the edit summary. If the source text is dual- or multi-licensed, it is only necessary that at least one of the licenses is compatible with CC-BY-SA. It is not necessary that external content be dual licensed under the GFDL.}}</ref>

== History ==
The GFDL was released in draft form for feedback in September 1999.<ref>{{cite newsgroup |title=New Documentation License--Comments Requested |author=Richard Stallman |date=12 September 1999 |newsgroup=gnu.misc.discuss |message-id=gnusenet199909120759.DAA04152@psilocin.gnu.org |url=http://tech-insider.org/free-software/research/1999/0912.html |access-date=August 17, 2017}}</ref> After revisions, version 1.1 was issued in March 2000, version 1.2 in November 2002, and version 1.3 in November 2008. The current state of the license is version 1.3.<ref name="onepoint3faq">{{cite web|url=https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3-faq.html |title=FDL 1.3 FAQ |publisher=Gnu.org |access-date=2011-11-07}}</ref>

The first discussion draft of the GNU Free Documentation License version 2 was released on September 26, 2006, along with a draft of the new [[GNU Simpler Free Documentation License]].

On December 1, 2007, Wikipedia founder [[Jimmy Wales]] announced that a long period of discussion and negotiation between and amongst the Free Software Foundation, Creative Commons, the [[Wikimedia Foundation]] and others had produced a proposal supported by both the FSF and Creative Commons to modify the Free Documentation License in such a fashion as to allow the possibility for the Wikimedia Foundation to migrate the projects to the similar [[Creative Commons Attribution 2.5|Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike]] (CC BY-SA) license.<ref>{{cite web |last=Lessig |first=Lawrence |url=http://lessig.org/blog/2007/12/some_important_news_from_wikip.html |title=Some important news from Wikipedia to understand clearly (Lessig Blog) |publisher=Lessig.org |date=2007-12-01 |access-date=2011-11-07 |archive-date=2011-10-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111026061623/http://lessig.org/blog/2007/12/some_important_news_from_wikip.html |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update |title=Wikimediafoundation.org |publisher=Wikimediafoundation.org |access-date=2011-11-07}}</ref> These changes were implemented on version 1.3 of the license, which includes a new provision allowing certain materials released under the license to be used under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license also.<ref name="onepoint3faq"/>

== Conditions ==
Material licensed under the current version of the license can be used for any purpose, as long as the use meets certain conditions.
* All previous authors of the work must be [[Attribution (copyright)|attributed]].
* All changes to the work must be logged.
* All [[derivative work]]s must be licensed under the same license.
* The full text of the license, unmodified invariant sections as defined by the author if any, and any other added warranty disclaimers (such as a general disclaimer alerting readers that the document may not be accurate for example) and copyright notices from previous versions must be maintained.
* Technical measures such as [[digital rights management|DRM]] may not be used to control or obstruct distribution or editing of the document.

=== Secondary sections ===
The license explicitly separates any kind of "Document" from "Secondary Sections", which may not be integrated with the Document, but exist as front-matter materials or appendices. Secondary sections can contain information regarding the author's or publisher's relationship to the subject matter, but not any subject matter itself. While the Document itself is wholly editable and is essentially covered by a license equivalent to (but mutually incompatible with) the [[GNU General Public License]], some of the secondary sections have various restrictions designed primarily to deal with proper attribution to previous authors.

Specifically, the authors of prior versions have to be acknowledged and certain "invariant sections" specified by the original author and dealing with his or her relationship to the subject matter may not be changed. If the material is modified, its title has to be changed (unless the prior authors permit to retain the title).

The license also has provisions for the handling of front-cover and back-cover texts of books, as well as for "History", "Acknowledgements", "Dedications" and "Endorsements" sections. These features were added in part to make the license more financially attractive to commercial publishers of software documentation, some of whom were consulted during the drafting of the GFDL.<ref name=why>Richard Stallman: [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-gfdl.html Why publishers should use the GNU FDL]  Accessed on 2009-07-17</ref><ref name="gnufaq">GNU project: [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhyNotGPLForManuals Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses: Why don't you use the GPL for manuals?]</ref> "Endorsements" sections are intended to be used in official standard documents, where the distribution of modified versions should only be permitted if they are not labeled as that standard anymore.<ref name="gnufaq"/>

=== Commercial redistribution ===
The GFDL requires the ability to "copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially" and therefore is incompatible with material that excludes commercial re-use. As mentioned above, the GFDL was designed with commercial publishers in mind, as Stallman explained:{{quote|The GFDL is meant as a way to enlist commercial publishers in funding free documentation without surrendering any vital liberty. The 'cover text' feature, and certain other aspects of the license that deal with covers, title page, history, and endorsements, are included to make the license appealing to commercial publishers for books whose authors are paid.<ref name=why/>}} Material that restricts commercial re-use is incompatible with the license and cannot be incorporated into the work. However, incorporating such restricted material may be [[fair use]] under United States copyright law (or [[fair dealing]] in some other countries) and does not need to be licensed to fall within the GFDL if such fair use is covered by all potential subsequent uses. One example of such liberal and commercial fair use is [[parody]].

===Compatibility with Creative Commons licensing terms===
Although the two licenses work on similar copyleft principles, the GFDL is not compatible with the [[Creative Commons]] [[Creative Commons licenses|Attribution-ShareAlike]] license.

However, at the request of the [[Wikimedia Foundation]],<ref name="onepoint3faq"/> version 1.3 added a time-limited section allowing specific types of websites using the GFDL to additionally offer their work under the CC BY-SA license. These exemptions allow a GFDL-based collaborative project with multiple authors to transition to the CC BY-SA 3.0 license, without first obtaining the permission of every author, if the work satisfies several conditions:<ref name="onepoint3faq"/>
* The work must have been produced on a "Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site" (MMC), such as a public [[wiki]] for example.
* If external content originally published on a MMC is present on the site, the work must have been licensed under Version 1.3 of the GNU FDL, or an earlier version but with the "or any later version" declaration, with no cover texts or invariant sections. If it was not originally published on an MMC, it can only be [[Software relicensing|relicensed]] if it were added to an MMC before November 1, 2008.

To prevent the clause from being used as a general compatibility measure, the license itself only allowed the change to occur before August 1, 2009. At the release of version 1.3, the FSF stated that all content added before November 1, 2008 to Wikipedia as an example satisfied the conditions. The Wikimedia Foundation itself after a public referendum, invoked this process to [[dual-license]] content released under the GFDL under the [[CC BY-SA]] license in June 2009, and adopted a foundation-wide attribution policy for the use of content from Wikimedia Foundation projects.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/05/21/wikimedia-community-approves-license-migration/ |title=Wikimedia community approves license migration |work=Wikimedia Foundation|publisher=Wikimedia Foundation |access-date=2009-05-21}}</ref><ref>[https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_update_approval Wikimedia license update approval]</ref><ref>[http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/30/licensing-update-rolled-out-in-all-wikimedia-wikis/ Licensing update rolled out in all Wikimedia wikis] on wikimedia.org by Erik Moeller on June 30th, 2009 ''"Perhaps the most significant reason to choose CC-BY-SA as our primary content license was to be compatible with many of the other admirable endeavors out there to share and develop free knowledge"''</ref>

==Enforcement==
There have currently been no cases involving the GFDL in a court of law, although its sister license for software, the [[GNU General Public License]], has been successfully enforced in such a setting.<ref>{{cite web|title=BusyBox and the GPL Prevail Again - Updated 4Xs |url=http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100803132055210 |first=Pamela|last=Jones |work=[[Groklaw]] |date=2010-08-03|access-date=2019-05-17}}</ref> Although the content of [[Wikipedia]] has been plagiarized and used in violation of the GFDL by other sites, such as [[Baidu Baike]], no contributors have ever tried to bring an organization to court due to violation of the GFDL. In the case of Baidu, Wikipedia representatives asked the site and its contributors to respect the terms of the licenses and to make proper attributions.<ref>{{cite news
|url=http://www.pcworld.com/article/135550/article.html
|title=Baidu May Be Worst Wikipedia Copyright Violator
|publisher=[[PC World (magazine)|PC World]]
|date=6 August 2007
|access-date=10 September 2007
}}</ref>

==Criticism==
Some critics consider the GFDL a non-free license. Some reasons for this are that the GFDL allows "invariant" text which cannot be modified or removed, and that its prohibition against [[digital rights management]] (DRM) systems applies to valid usages, like for "private copies made and not distributed".<ref name="nerode2007">{{cite web|url=http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071210175219/http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html |archive-date=2007-12-10 |title=Why You Shouldn't Use the GNU FDL |date=2007-12-10 |access-date=2011-11-07|first=Nathanael|last=Nerode}}</ref>

Notably, the [[Debian]] project,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml |title=Draft Debian Position Statement about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)|year=2006|access-date=2007-09-25 |first=Manoj |last=Srivastava |quote=''It is not possible to borrow text from a GFDL'd manual and incorporate it in any free software program whatsoever. This is not a mere license incompatibility. It's not just that the GFDL is incompatible with this or that free software license: it's that it is fundamentally incompatible with any free software license whatsoever. So if you write a new program, and you have no commitments at all about what license you want to use, saving only that it be a free license, you cannot include GFDL'd text. The GNU FDL, as it stands today, does not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines. There are significant problems with the license, as detailed above; and, as such, we cannot accept works licensed under the GNU FDL into our distribution.''}}</ref> [[Thomas Bushnell]],<ref name="lwn">{{cite web |url=https://lwn.net/Articles/59147/ |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120713142623/http://lwn.net/Articles/59147/ |archive-date=2012-07-13 |title=Thomas Bushnell dismissed from Hurd project for criticizing GFDL |publisher=archive.is |access-date=2017-04-16 |date=2003-11-19 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Nathanael Nerode,<ref name="nerode2003">{{cite web|url=http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031009105046/http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html |archive-date=2003-10-09 |title=Why You Shouldn't Use the GNU FDL |access-date=2011-11-07 |first=Nathanael |last=Nerode |date=2003-09-24}}</ref> and [[Bruce Perens]]<ref name="Bruceperens2003">{{cite web|url=https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/09/msg00091.html |publisher=lists.debian.org/debian-legal |title=stepping in between Debian and FSF |author=Bruce Perens |author-link=Bruce Perens |date=2 Sep 2003 |access-date=2016-03-20 |quote=''FSF, a Free Software organization, isn't being entirely true to the Free Software ethos while it is promoting a license that allows invariant sections to be applied to anything but the license text and attribution. FSF is not Creative Commons:the documentation that FSF handles is an essential component of FSF's Free Software, and should be treated as such. In that light, the GFDL isn't consistent with the ethos that FSF has promoted for 19 years.''}}</ref> have raised objections. Bruce Perens saw the GFDL even outside the "Free Software ethos":<ref name="Bruceperens2003"/>
{{quote|"FSF, a Free Software organization, isn't being entirely true to the [[Free Software]] ethos while it is promoting a license that allows invariant sections to be applied to anything but the license text and attribution. [...] the GFDL isn't consistent with the ethos that FSF has promoted for 19 years."}}

In 2006, Debian developers voted to consider works licensed under the GFDL to comply with their [[Debian Free Software Guidelines]] provided the invariant section clauses are not used.<ref name=debianresolution>Debian Project: [http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001.en.html#amendmenttexta Resolution: Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian]. Voted February–March 2006. (Accessed June 20, 2009)</ref> The results was GFDL without invariant sections is DFSG compliant.<ref name=debianresolution/> However, their resolution stated that even without invariant sections, GFDL-licensed software documentation "is still not free of trouble", namely because of its incompatibility with the major free software licenses.<ref name=debianresolution/>

Those opposed to the GFDL have recommended the use of alternative licenses such as the [[BSD License]] or the GNU GPL.<ref name=debianresolution/>

The [[FLOSS Manuals]] foundation, an organization devoted to creating manuals for free software, decided to eschew the GFDL in favor of the GPL for its texts in 2007, citing the incompatibility between the two, difficulties in implementing the GFDL, and the fact that the GFDL "does not allow for easy duplication and modification", especially for digital documentation.<ref>{{cite web|author1=FLOSS Manuals Foundation|author-link1=FLOSS Manuals|title=License Change|url=http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Blog/LicenseChange/|archive-url=https://archive.today/20080228211105/http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Blog/LicenseChange/|url-status=dead|archive-date=28 February 2008|website=FLOSS Manuals Blog|publisher=FLOSS Manuals Foundation |access-date=20 June 2009 | date=6 June 2007}}</ref>

===DRM clause===
The GNU FDL contains the statement:

{{quotation|You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute.}}

A criticism of this language is that it is too broad, because it applies to private copies made but not distributed. This means that a licensee is not allowed to save document copies "made" in a proprietary file format or using encryption.

In 2003, [[Richard Stallman]] said about the above sentence on the debian-legal mailing list:<ref>Richard Stallman (2003-09-06), [http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/09/msg00212.html Re: A possible GFDL compromise]. Accessed on 2007-09-25.</ref>

{{quotation|This means that you cannot publish them under DRM systems to restrict the possessors of the copies. It isn't supposed to refer to use of encryption or file access control on your own copy. I will talk with our lawyer and see if that sentence needs to be clarified.}}

===Invariant sections===
A GNU FDL work can quickly be encumbered because a new, different title must be given and a list of previous titles must be kept. This could lead to the situation where there are a whole series of title pages, and dedications, in each and every copy of the book if it has a long lineage. These pages cannot be removed until the work enters the [[public domain]] after [[copyright]] expires.

[[Richard Stallman]] said about invariant sections on the ''debian-legal'' mailing list:<ref>Richard Stallman, (2003-08-23), [http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/08/msg00807.html Re: A possible GFDL compromise]. Accessed on 2007-09-25.</ref>

{{quotation|The goal of invariant sections, ever since the 80s when we first made the GNU Manifesto an invariant section in the Emacs Manual, was to make sure they could not be removed. Specifically, to make sure that distributors of Emacs that also distribute non-free software could not remove the statements of our philosophy, which they might think of doing because those statements criticize their actions.}}

===GPL incompatible in both directions===
The GNU FDL is [[License compatibility|incompatible]] in both directions with the GPL—material under the GNU FDL cannot be put into GPL code and GPL code cannot be put into a GNU FDL manual.<ref>[http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/04/msg00258.html Richard Braakman on Debian-legal] about GFDL/GPL incompatibility</ref> At the June 22nd and 23rd 2006 international GPLv3 conference in Barcelona, [[Eben Moglen]] hinted that a future version of the GPL could be made suitable for documentation:<ref>[http://fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/barcelona-moglen-transcript#lgpl Transcript of Eben Moglen at the 3rd international GPLv3 conference; 22nd June 2006]: LGPL, like merging electronic weak. Accessed on 2009-06-20.</ref>

{{quotation|By expressing LGPL as just an additional permission on top of GPL we simplify our licensing landscape drastically. It's like for physics getting rid of a force, right? We just unified electro-weak, ok? The grand unified field theory still escapes us until the document licences too are just additional permissions on top of GPL. I don't know how we'll ever get there, that's gravity, it's really hard.}}

===Burdens when printing===
The GNU FDL requires that licensees, when printing a document covered by the license, must also include "this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document". This means that if a licensee prints out a copy of an article whose text is covered under the GNU FDL, they must also include a copyright notice and a physical printout of the GNU FDL, which is a significantly large document in itself. Worse, the same is required for the standalone use of just one (for example, Wikipedia) image.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://notablog.notafish.com/post/2005/04/21/26-why-the-wikimedia-projects-should-not-use-gfdl-as-a-stand-alone-license-for-images |title=Why the Wikimedia projects should not use GFDL as a stand alone license for images |publisher=Notablog.notafish.com |date=2005-04-21 |access-date=2021-03-14}}</ref> [[Wikivoyage]], a web site dedicated to [[free content]] travel guides, chose not to use the GFDL because it considers it unsuitable for short printed texts.<ref>[[Wikivoyage:Project:Why Wikivoyage isn't GFDL]]</ref>

== Other licenses for free works ==
Some of these were developed independently of the GNU FDL, while others were developed in response to perceived flaws in the GNU FDL.
* [[GNU Simpler Free Documentation License]]
* [[Creative Commons licenses]]
* [[Design Science License]]
* [[Free Art license]]
* [[FreeBSD Documentation License]]
* [[Open Content License]]
* [[Open Game License]]
* [[Open Publication License]]
* [[WTFPL]]

== List of projects that use the GFDL ==
{{Expand list|date=August 2008}}
* Most projects of the [[Wikimedia Foundation]], including [[Wikipedia]] (excluding [[Wikivoyage]] and [[Wikinews]]) - On June 15, 2009, the Section 11 clauses were used to dual-license the content of these wikis under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license and GFDL.
* [[An Anarchist FAQ]]
* [[Citizendium]] - the project uses GFDL for articles originally from Wikipedia.
* [[Free On-line Dictionary of Computing]]
* [[Last.fm]] - artists descriptions are under GFDL
* [[Marxists Internet Archive]]
* [[PlanetMath]] (now uses CC-BY-SA license)
* [[Rosetta Code]]
* [[SourceWatch]]
* The specification documents that define [[TRAK]], an [[enterprise architecture framework]], are released under the GFDL.
* ''Abstract Algebra'' by Thomas W. Judson.<ref>{{cite web | last1=Judson | first1=Thomas W. | title=Abstract Algebra: Theory and Applications | year=2015 | url=http://abstract.ups.edu }}</ref>
* the [[Baseball-Reference]]'s BR Bullpen, a free user-contributed baseball wiki

== See also ==
{{Portal|Free and open-source software}}
<!-- Please keep entries in alphabetical order & add a short description [[WP:SEEALSO]] -->
{{div col|small=yes|colwidth=20em}}
* [[BSD license]]
* [[Copyleft]]
* [[Copyright]]
* [[Free software license]]
* [[GNU]]
* [[Non-commercial educational]]
* [[Open content]]
* [[Share-alike]]
* [[Software licensing]]
{{div col end}}
<!-- please keep entries in alphabetical order -->

== References ==
{{Reflist|35em}}

==External links==
{{listen|filename=GFDL (English).ogg|title=Listen to the GFDL (0:23:28) version 1.2, November 2002, (recorded 2005-05-28)|description=Audio recording of the full text of the GNU Free Documentation License.|format=[[Ogg]]}}
* [http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html FSF guide to the new drafts of documentation licenses]
* [https://gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html GFDL official text]
* [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html Free Software and Free Manuals], essay by Richard Stallman
* [https://opensource.apple.com/cdl/ Apple's Common Documentation License] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090331154525/http://www.opensource.apple.com/cdl/ |date=2009-03-31 }}, an alternative license

{{GNU}}

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[[Category:GNU Project]]
[[Category:Free content licenses]]
[[Category:Software documentation]]
[[Category:Copyleft]]
[[Category:Free Software Foundation]]
[[Category:Free and open-source software licenses]]
[[Category:Copyleft software licenses]]