Update Haiku Book to refer to BeBook

[mmadia]

These are some snippets from an email conversation with ACCESS Co., Ltd.'s General Counsel department, which was able to answer several legal questions:

Matt Madia wrote:

For the BeBook, as you know it's released under a CC by-nc-nd/3.0. The
details of the 'no derivative works' part has been pondered by several
contributors over time. Though, the project has always stayed on the
conservative side and not taken any chances.

Would it be possible to clarify ACCESS CO.'s interpretation of what
would and would not constitute a derivative work? I'm mainly
interested to what extent the Haiku Book could refer to the BeBook, if
at all.

As an example, for sections where the BeBook accurately documents
Haiku's API, could the Haiku Book (http://api.haiku-os.org) include
text like "Refer to 'The Mail Kit - BMailMessage' in the BeBook."?

ACCESS Co., Ltd.'s General Counsel replied:

Next, as to the definition of a "derivative work", we do not have any
special opinion thereto, and the definition should be in line with 
the defintion in the US copyright law.  With respect to the matter 
specifically raised by you (for sections where the BeBook accurately
documents Haiku's API, could the Haiku Book (http://api.haiku-os.org)
include text like "Refer to 'The Mail Kit - BMailMessage' in the BeBook."?,),
we do not see any legal issue in such reference.

Update: It is OK to present links to the relevant sections. In the above example, 'The Mail Kit - BMailMessage' in the BeBook can even be a hyperlink to ​http://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/bebook/BMailMessage.html

Based on this conversation, the Haiku Book could be populated with such entries. This would then help to identify which sections of the API need to be documented, and ideally to inspire others to contribute.

[nielx]

jscipione: what do you think? The Haiku Book is getting more and more complete (very nice work!), can we close this issue since it is becoming less and less relevant?

[jscipione]

We can and should hyperlink to the BeBook where appropriate, I have done it in a couple of places. The problem with this long term is that the BeBook has errors which we cannot fix, so, we really need a replacement that we are allowed to modify. It doesn't do a lot of good to link to something that is wrong. Also, the BeBook is really starting to get out of date to the point where information it is either missing or no longer valid since we've added or changed something in Haiku (for the better, almost always).

If somehow someone can convince Access, Inc. to license the BeBook under conditions that would allow us to incorporate the text into a derivative work that would allow us to pull in useful parts.