KMail documentation / Licenses

[David Bryant]

Hello. I'm the guy who wrote the documentation for KAddressBook about a year 
ago.I got pretty busy with other stuff for a while, but now I have some time to 
devote to KDE documentation. Since I use the KMail program a lot, and since 
the documentation is for version 4.12 (2013-06-26) and pretty far out of date, 
I'm planning to work on bringing that up to date (I have KMail 5.14.3 
(20.04.3) running under Gentoo Linux right now -- the next release will 
probably be "stable" in two or three months).

Anyway, I have a question. The template for docbooks at 

https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/kdoctools/-/blob/master/src/template.docbook

implies that new or revised documentation should use the Creative Commons 
License version 4 International. The existing documentation contains copyright 
statements for both the program source code (GNU GPL) and for the 
documentation itself (GNU Free Documentation License).

It seems to me that the program copyright ought not appear in the docbook -- 
it is embedded in the program itself (Help --> About KMail). So I think I 
ought to remove that one line. There is also a very long list of software 
authors in the license / credits section, which ought to remain intact.

My main question is about the copyright on the documentation. Should I update 
to the Creative Commons License? If so, do I need to get permission from the 
previous authors? I think there are just three of them: David Rugge, Daniel 
Naber, and Scarlett Clark. I don't mind writing to each of them. I'm just not 
certain about the correct procedure to follow here. I understand the XML stuff 
fairly well. I need help with the legal stuff, though.

Thanks!

David Bryant
Canyon Lake, Texas
davidbryant at gvtc.com
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