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Re: Rewrite of the free documentation to make it about MariaDB, not MySQL

 

On Mon, 2 Nov 2009 16:54:52 +0200, Henrik Ingo
<henrik.ingo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Henrik> Back from vacation, taking another stab at this.

Welcome back!

<cut>

Henrik> I didn't check, but unless something changed I think the MySQL
Henrik> manual is *not* part of our packages currently?

AFAIK this is correct. The only pieces of documentation we are
allowed to use (under the terms of GPLv2) are the fill_help_tables.sql
file and some INSTALL... files. There might also be a couple others
that I can't remember right now.

Henrik> The reasons we once decided to omit it was that:
Henrik>  - Most people browse the online docs anyway
Henrik>  - MySQL manual is not Free so we may just as well learn to
Henrik> live without it
Henrik>  - You are allowed to distribute the MySQL manual "disseminated
Henrik> together with the software", which is kind of true for MariaDB,
Henrik> but a hostile lawyer could argue that MariaDB is not MySQL, so
Henrik> we wouldn't fullfil that requirement.

I can see how this could bite us, so I agree with Henrik that we should
not distribute the complete MySQL manual.

Henrik> Attached is the edited version.
Henrik> 
Henrik> Daniel, can you take ownership of this now. I'll comment by
Henrik> email if needed. (But don't expect to have anything to add.)

I made some further modifications to Henrik's version of the README. My
changes mainly focused on cleaning up the text (e.g. fixing a few
instances of what I considered to be awkward phrases and needless
duplication, and re-arranging things slightly for a better logical
flow).

I've created a branch of lp:maria on launchpad (my first one!). For now
the only difference is my modified version of the README file:

lp:~dbart/maria/maria-5.1-docmods

I've also attached it to this email so Henrik can easily review it.

-- 
Daniel Bartholomew
Monty Program - http://askmonty.org

Attachment: README
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