[Thanks for CC:ing me, I'm not on netbsd-users@]


On Wed, 15 Feb 2006, Chuck Swiger wrote:
> While this is a fine thing, does that mean that NetBSD will be able to get
> and/or reproduce or redistribute IEEE 1003/POSIX documentation freely with NetBSD?

Please note it's the NetBSD Foundation as legal entity that got the 
permission, and NetBSD developers as members of TNF can use the POSIX 
texts from SUSv3 in (most likely) manpage that are intended to be used in 
the NetBSD operating system.

Use is not "freely" though: We (TNF) got the obligation to acknoledge the 
copyright when we use POSIX text. As the documentation in question is 
mostly manpages, the obligation is to print a copyright statement in the 
manpages, both in source and in the rendered version of the manpages:

     COPYRIGHT
        Portions  of  this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
        from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
        --  Portable  Operating  System  Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
        Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003  by  the  Institute  of
        Electrical  and  Electronics  Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the
        event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
        The  Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
        is the referee document. The original Standard can be  obtained  online
        at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

Also, when taking text from SUSv3, it shall be noted that portions of of 
the text is written are written as a recommendation ("XXX shall do YYY", 
e.g. "macro shall be defined") which should be changed to state that this 
is actually the fact ("XXX does YYY", "macro is defined").

A script to assist Members of TNF (i.e. that's not available to the 
public) in doing this and a bit more information can be found in 
localsrc/legal/TheOpenGroup.

Probably also worth mentioning that while SUSv3 is available in HTML, and 
manpages are written in *roff, there is actually a set of POSIX-compliant 
manpages under the above-mentioned copyright of IEEE and The Open Group 
(and under no other copyright, esp. not GPL or FDL) is available from the 
GNU documentation project in the man[013]p sections of their man-pages, 
see e.g. 
ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux-local/manpages/man-pages-2.23.tar.gz.

Please note also that the plan is NOT to blindly import all POSIX/SUSv3 
manpages, but only use what is needed to document the actual state of the 
NetBSD operating system with its tools and interfaces. We just don't need 
to rewrite things like the manpages for the upcoming wide-curses work.


  - Hubert