The FLOSS Manuals (FM) is a non-profit foundation founded in 2006 by Adam Hyde and based in the Netherlands. The foundation is focused on the creation of quality documentation about how to use free software.
Its web site is a wiki (previously using the TWiki and Booki programs, now using Booktype) focused on the collaborative authoring of manuals. The documentation is licensed under the GPL. Although initially the manuals were covered by the GFDL, the material was relicensed to the GPL due to concerns about the limitations of the GFDL.
Anyone can contribute to the material at FLOSS Manuals. Each manual has a maintainer – very much like the Debian maintainer system. The maintainer keeps an overview of the manual and discusses with those interested the structure, etc. The maintainer is also responsible for gathering new contributors together. Not all edits are 'live' – the edits are published to the manual when ready. This is to ensure the quality of the manuals is as high and as reliable as possible and that no new user encounters 'half finished' content.
Manuals are available as HTML online, or indexed PDF. Additionally manuals can be remixed so anyone can create their own manual and export to indexed PDF, HTML (ZIP/tar) or an 'Ajax' include.
In fall 2007, Floss manuals was awarded a 15,000 Euro prize by the Dutch Digital Pioneer fund. It has also been financially supported by Google and NLnet. FLOSS Manuals also received a Transmediale Award for its work on Booki and has also been featured in the Texas Linux Fest 2010.
FLOSS Manuals has manuals for all of the following.
Some manuals have been selected for inclusion on the VALO-CD, a collection of the best software for Windows.
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The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general use and was originally written by the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Richard Stallman, for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition.
Software relicensing is applied in open-source software development when software licenses of software modules are incompatible and are required to be compatible for a greater combined work. Licenses applied to software as copyrightable works, in source code as binary form, can contain contradictory clauses. These requirements can make it impossible to combine source code or content of several software works to create a new combined one. Sometimes open-source software projects get stuck in a license incompatibility situation.
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.