GNU Free Documentation License
Enable an AI agent to identify the GNU Free Documentation License, resolve its application to a work, and assess the conditions and evidence needed for a proposed reuse.
Research draft, second pass
A second pass drafted this model: the structure a model of this thing needs, and what is known about it in the world. The line under this one says how the second half was obtained - researched against sources, or recalled without web access, in which case nothing here was read anywhere and every claim is a lead to verify. Unreviewed either way.
Researched by: Codex + Grok
Purpose and description
Enable an AI agent to identify the GNU Free Documentation License, resolve its application to a work, and assess the conditions and evidence needed for a proposed reuse.
The GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) is a copyleft license for manuals, textbooks, and other functional or useful documents, issued by the Free Software Foundation, that grants anyone permission to copy, redistribute, and modify a work provided that all copies and derivative works remain under the same license and that any designated invariant sections, cover texts, and acknowledgements are preserved unchanged.
It can be Resolve a document's license notice to an evidenced GNU FDL release and selection basis.; Extract preservation declarations and flag conflicting or incomplete notices.; Construct an operation-specific checklist for copying, editing, translating, or combining documents.; Assess a distribution package and its Transparent-copy arrangements.; Identify missing permissions or evidence before proceeding with reuse.; Trace a termination, cure, or historical relicensing claim to dated supporting records..
Distinguishing features
Match the operative text to a GNU FDL release rather than identifying it from a generic free-documentation label.
Check for document-specific Invariant Section and Cover Text declarations, which distinguish its application from ordinary attribution-only licensing.
Check whether reuse invokes Transparent and Opaque copy categories rather than software source and executable categories.
Distinguish permission to modify a licensed document from permission to alter the license text itself.
Treat a claimed migration to CC BY-SA as a separately evidenced historical route, not general license equivalence.
Scope
+ License text identity and permitted version selection
+ Evidence that a particular document invokes the license
+ Invariant Sections and required Cover Text declarations
+ Copying, modification, translation, and combination conditions
+ Transparent-copy provision and distribution obligations
+ Termination, reinstatement, and historical relicensing assessments
- The substantive content and editorial quality of licensed documents
- Ownership disputes and general copyright-law exceptions
- Software licensing under the GNU GPL
- Independent models of Creative Commons licenses
- Publisher identity, business operations, and hosting infrastructure
Characteristics
- Operative release
- Verified published GNU FDL version; unresolved An assessment must use the selected release's actual clauses.
- Version-selection basis
- Specified version only; later-version option; unspecified version; authorized proxy; unresolved The document notice determines which release-selection routes need evaluation.
- Application evidence
- Document edition -> license notice -> declaring rights holder -> captured evidence A nearby license file does not by itself establish the scope of a grant.
- Preservation declarations
- Verified declarations; verified none; incomplete evidence; conflicting declarations Missing evidence must not silently become an assertion that no protected sections or cover passages exist.
- Copy representation
- Transparent; Opaque; unresolved, with assessment evidence An agent needs to inspect practical editability as well as file format.
- Distribution quantity
- Number of copies, tied to edition, medium, distributor, and assessment period Quantity can activate additional obligations.
- Availability commitment
- Required-through date and observed availability dates A download location needs a time-bounded maintenance assessment.
- Permission assessment
- Conditions evidenced; conditions unmet; evidence insufficient; rights terminated; reinstatement under assessment The decision belongs to a particular actor, work, operation, and selected release.
Where this came from
wikidata · CC0 1.0
Drafted structure
Bundle to layer to finding to question, as the second pass will find it: 7 bundles · 13 layers · 20 findings · 32 questions.
License and grant resolution Record the operative text and its attachment to a document.
A GNU FDL label alone cannot establish the applicable conditions.
Release identification
Separate the registered license family from a selected release.
Operative text
Capture the inspected text and clause locations; version 1.3 is available in [SPDX's license-text record](https://spdx.org/licenses/GFDL-1.3-only.html).
- Which published release does the supplied text match, and where was that text inspected? provenance
- Is the artifact the license text, a document license notice, or a translation of either? definition
Document attachment
Connect the grant to an identified document edition.
Notice and version choice
Record notice scope, declaring authority, and the evidence supporting release selection.
- Which notice applies to this edition and its included components, and who placed it? provenance
- What notice wording or proxy statement supports choosing the proposed GNU FDL version? action
Invariants and cover declarations Record document-specific restrictions on sections and cover passages.
These declarations can change which edits and publication packages are feasible.
Section designations
Connect declared titles to actual document sections.
Invariant Section assessment
Record designation evidence, section content, and unresolved qualification issues.
- Which exact titles does the notice designate as invariant, and where are their corresponding sections? provenance
- Does each designated section qualify as a Secondary Section under the selected release? boundary
Cover passages
Track the wording and origin of each required cover passage.
Cover Text inventory
Record side, sequence, word count, and permission evidence for proposed changes.
- What Front-Cover and Back-Cover Texts are declared, and what is each passage's word count? measurement
- Who added each passage, and what permits its proposed addition or replacement? action
Copying and Transparent access Assess a particular distribution package and delivery arrangement.
Medium, quantity, and editability affect the conditions an agent must check.
Distribution package
Inspect the actual copies and accompanying material.
Copying conditions
Record notice inclusion, restrictions, copy counts, and cover treatment.
- Do the copies carry the required license and notices, and do delivery terms or technical controls introduce restrictions? boundary
- How many copies are planned in each medium, and which quantity or cover conditions does that trigger? measurement
Editable-copy access
Assess representation and any continuing access obligation.
Transparent-copy evidence
Record editability tests, delivery method, and availability dates.
- What inspection demonstrates that the proposed Transparent copy is complete and straightforward to revise? measurement
- If Transparent-copy provision is required, how will it be delivered and through what date must network access be maintained? action
Modification and translation Assess an edited or translated document against its source edition.
A reuse decision needs a comparison of changed content and preserved material.
Modified edition record
Track the proposed edition's title, credits, notices, and history.
Editorial obligation check
Record a clause-linked comparison between source and output.
- Which title, authorship, publisher, copyright, licensing, and History changes are needed for this modified edition? action
- How are acknowledgements, dedications, disclaimers, endorsements, and prior Transparent-copy locations treated? boundary
Translation permissions
Distinguish translated document content from translated protected material and legal notices.
Translation treatment
Record original-language retention and any special permission relied upon.
- Does the translation retain or replace any Invariant Section, and what permission supports replacement? action
- Which original license, notice, and disclaimer texts accompany their translations? provenance
Combination and license boundaries Assess reuse alongside other documents and under alternative grants.
Combining content requires a different assessment from distributing independent works together.
Assembly classification
Identify how source documents participate in the resulting work.
Combination, collection, or aggregate
Record the assembly classification and resulting document-level obligations.
- What evidence supports treating the output as a combined document, collection, aggregate, or extraction? boundary
- How will the output handle incompatible version choices, colliding invariant titles, histories, and license-copy placement? action
Alternative license route
Separate additional grants from historical GNU FDL relicensing claims.
Relicensing evidence
Record the exact authority, dates, and material covered by any alternative-license claim.
- Is the alternative license supported by a separate rights-holder grant or a claimed version 1.3 MMC relicensing event? provenance
- For an MMC claim, what evidence establishes eligibility, incorporation dates, and republication within the historical deadline? boundary
Permission continuity and cure Track whether an actor can rely on the grant for a proposed operation.
Possession of a licensed copy does not settle an actor's permission state after a violation.
Operation assessment
Bind the decision to an actor, edition, operation, and release.
Permission basis
Separate evidenced satisfaction of conditions from incomplete assessment.
- Which selected-release clauses support this actor's proposed copying, modification, or distribution? action
- Which conditions are evidenced, unmet, or still unresolved for that operation? boundary
Termination and reinstatement
Record violation and cure evidence for each relevant rights holder.
Rights-state timeline
Track dated events without importing reinstatement rules from another release.
- What evidence dates the violation, cessation, notification, cure, and any final termination? provenance
- Under the selected release, what supports provisional or permanent reinstatement for each rights holder? action
Evidence and external alignment What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.
A model that cannot be lined up against existing standards, identifiers and practice cannot be adopted by anyone who already uses them.
Reported evidence
Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.
Kinds and varieties
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- GFDL 1.1 (March 2000) - first public version
- GFDL 1.2 (November 2002) - clarifications, still widely seen on older manuals
- GFDL 1.3 (November 2008) - adds a time-limited mass-relicensing path to CC BY-SA 3.0 for wiki-style sites
- GFDL with invariant sections and/or cover texts - the restricted form used in many GNU manuals
- GFDL with no invariant sections and no cover texts - the form required for Wikimedia relicensing eligibility
- GFDL-only (no dual license) vs dual-licensed GFDL + another license (commonly CC BY-SA)
- Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of GNU Free Documentation License this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Identifiers and schemes
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Wikidata - Q22169 - item 'GNU Free Documentation License'
- SPDX License Identifier - GFDL-1.1, GFDL-1.2, GFDL-1.3, plus -invariants-only / -no-invariants / -or-later suffixes - canonical machine names on the SPDX License List
- FSF / GNU license URL - https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html (and fdl-1.2, fdl-1.1) - canonical human-readable texts
- OSI / license-list short name - not OSI-approved as an open-source *software* license; treated as a documentation license - OSI list does not include GFDL as a software license
- Which of these identifiers and schemes hold for the sense of GNU Free Documentation License this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Standards and regulation
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- GNU Free Documentation License 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 - Free Software Foundation (copyright license, not a statute)
- SPDX License List identifiers for GFDL variants - Linux Foundation / SPDX
- Copyright law of the United States (title 17 U.S.C.) and Berne Convention implementations - the legal substrate the license sits on
- Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use (post-2009) - dual-licensing of Wikimedia content as GFDL 1.3 and CC BY-SA 3.0
- Which of these standards and regulation hold for the sense of GNU Free Documentation License this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Real-world use
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- License notice in GNU software manuals (Texinfo/PDF/HTML) published by the FSF, often with invariant 'GNU Manifesto' or similar sections and front/back cover texts.
- Historical and residual license of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia wikis (2002-2009 GFDL-only; thereafter dual-licensed GFDL 1.3 + CC BY-SA 3.0, with new edits effectively under CC BY-SA).
- Packaging metadata: Debian, Fedora, and other distributions tag documentation files with SPDX GFDL-1.x[-invariants|-no-invariants][-or-later] in debian/copyright or RPM license fields.
- Printed and online textbooks and HOWTOs (Linux Documentation Project era, some university lecture notes) that required copyleft for the text but allowed invariant political or philosophical sections.
- Reuse of Wikipedia material in books and mirrors: the GFDL's 'title page', invariant-section, and cover-text rules made commercial paper reprints awkward, which is why Wikimedia moved to CC BY-SA.
- Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of GNU Free Documentation License this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Typical measurements
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- license version - 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 - version identifier
- count of invariant sections - 0 (wiki-eligible) to a handful (GNU manuals often 1-3) - section
- length of front-cover / back-cover texts - GFDL 1.3 allows up to 5 words front, 25 words back - word
- transparent-copy requirement threshold - if more than 100 copies of an opaque (e.g. printed) edition are published, a machine-readable transparent copy must be provided or offered - copy
- Which of these typical measurements hold for the sense of GNU Free Documentation License this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Failure modes and hazards
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Invariant sections and cover texts make the work incompatible with Creative Commons and with many documentation reuse pipelines; combining GFDL-with-invariants text into a CC BY-SA work is generally not allowed.
- The 'transparent copy' and title-page obligations are easy to miss when reprinting or bundling, producing an invalid distribution rather than a licensed one.
- Version skew: a work licensed 'GFDL 1.2 only' cannot use the 1.3 wiki-relicensing clause; 'or any later version' vs a pinned version changes relicensing options.
- Secondary liability / notice stripping: removing the GFDL notice, invariant sections, or acknowledgements terminates the license grant for that copy.
- Practical unusability for collaborative wikis: history-preservation and invariant-section rules were a major reason Wikipedia dual-licensed and now prefers CC BY-SA for new contributions.
- Confusion with GPL: applying GFDL to software source, or GPL to a manual, yields a document/software license mismatch that distributors then mis-tag.
- Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of GNU Free Documentation License this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Regional variation
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- The license text is English-authentic; unofficial translations exist but FSF states that only the English original is legally binding, so courts outside English-speaking jurisdictions interpret a foreign-language original plus a non-binding translation.
- Wikimedia projects: English Wikipedia and most large Wikipedias completed the 2009 dual-licensing; some smaller projects and non-Wikimedia GFDL wikis never did, so GFDL-only dumps still circulate.
- Debian and some European distributions historically treated GFDL-with-invariant-sections as non-free documentation; GFDL-without-invariants is usually accepted in main. US-centric GNU/FSF practice still ships manuals with invariants.
- Moral-rights jurisdictions (much of continental Europe) may constrain waiver/modification of author attribution even where GFDL permits modification of the body text.
- Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of GNU Free Documentation License this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- GNU General Public License (GPL) - GPL is a software copyleft license (source, object, corresponding source). GFDL is a documentation copyleft license with invariant sections and cover texts; the two are not the same grant and are not automatically interchangeable.
- GNU Free Documentation License vs Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) - Both are copyleft-ish. CC BY-SA has no invariant sections or cover-text machinery. GFDL 1.3 added a one-time bridge to CC BY-SA 3.0 for mass-modified wiki sites under strict conditions; ordinary GFDL works do not become CC BY-SA.
- GNU Lesser / Library GPL or AGPL - Those are software licenses. A document under GFDL is not licensed as software; linking or combining rules of LGPL/AGPL do not apply to the manual text.
- CC BY (attribution only) or CC0 / public domain - Those permit non-share-alike reuse and, for CC0, relicensing. GFDL requires derivatives to stay under GFDL (copyleft) and to keep invariant matter.
- Open Publication License (OPL) / old OpenContent licenses - Pre-GFDL documentation licenses; some allowed publisher option clauses that GFDL forbids. Historical Linux documentation sometimes used OPL rather than GFDL.
- GFDL 'or later' vs a pinned version - Not a different license family, but a different grant: '1.3 or any later version' lets the FSF's future versions apply; a pinned '1.2 only' work cannot use 1.3's CC BY-SA relicensing clause.
- Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of GNU Free Documentation License this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Sources
- GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.3 - Canonical license text, definition of the work, invariant sections, cover texts, copyleft conditions, and the 1.3 relicensing clause.
- Why publishers should use the GNU FDL - FSF rationale: the license is for documentation of free software and other useful documents, and how invariant sections are meant to be used.
- Wikimedia Foundation licensing update / GFDL and CC BY-SA dual licensing - Real-world mass use on Wikipedia; the 2008-2009 move from GFDL-only to dual GFDL / CC BY-SA 3.0, which motivated GFDL 1.3.
- SPDX License List - GNU Free Documentation License identifiers - Stable machine identifiers GFDL-1.1, GFDL-1.2, GFDL-1.3 and the -invariants / -no-invariants variants used in software and documentation packaging.
What the second pass must settle
- Does an existing Vercy world model already own this license concept, requiring a registry link instead of a separate publication?
- Which earlier GNU FDL releases require explicit clause comparisons before this draft can support version-specific decisions beyond version 1.3?
- What review criteria should resolve disputed Secondary Section designations and ambiguous Transparent-copy representations?
- How should copy quantities and continuing availability obligations be assessed across digital editions, mirrors, retailers, and repeated distribution runs?
- What evidence standard should establish historical MMC relicensing eligibility or holder-specific reinstatement when notices and archives are incomplete?