The Borland InterBase 6 beta docs – although free – are not part of the InterBase package that was open-sourced in July 2000. We have asked Borland several times if we could use these docs “as if they fell under the InterBase Public License”, but they didn't even bother to answer. So feel free to use this documentation set as a source of information, but don't copy text from it.

PostgreSQL is another major open source database, with (not surprisingly) many similarities to Firebird, but also many differences. Depending on the kind of documentation you are going to write, it may be beneficial to base it on existing PostgreSQL docs. Be aware though that if you use PostgreSQL material, you MUST include their copyright notice in your document!

The PostgreSQL documentation homepage is here:

The most recent PostgreSQL license is currently at:

One nice thing about the PostgreSQL docs is that they are authored in DocBook, just like ours. However, they use DocBook SGML instead of XML, so some tweaking may be necessary. The DocBook SGML sources can be found here:

Or clone the entire Git tree, docs and all. For instructions, go to:

In order to release your work under the PDL, add an appendix titled License Notice, with this text:

Everything that looks _LIKE THIS_ must of course be replaced. If you are not the original author, you should leave his or her notice intact and append the following:

There may be several Contributor's sections in the License Notice.

If your contribution consists of more than a simple change or addition in one spot, also include an appendix called Document History before or after the License Notice. If such an appendix already exists, always enter a description of your modification(s) in it. Please note that even if there's a Document History, you must still add a contributor's section to the License Notice – but then you can fill in “see Document History” in place of the short description.

If you're the original author, it's also perfectly OK to include a Document History in the first version of a document, to serve as a starting point for future revisions. See the first revision element in the example below.

Centerpiece of the Document History is the revhistory element with its children:

<revhistory>
  <revision>
    <revnumber>1.0</revnumber>
    <date>12 Sep 2005</date>
    <authorinitials>PV</authorinitials>
    <revdescription>
      <para>First version</para>
    </revdescription>
  </revision>
  <revision>
    <revnumber>1.1</revnumber>
    <date>5 Dec 2005</date>
    <authorinitials>PV</authorinitials>
    <revdescription>
      <para>Added information on COALESCE</para>
      <para>Corrected some spelling errors</para>
    </revdescription>
  </revision>
</revhistory>

Please abbreviate the month name in the date element, as the date column in the PDF output is rather narrow.

Below is a Document History example (output view, not source!) that uses a revhistory element. Notice the referral to GitHub: we are legally obliged to identify and date all changes. But since git already does that, we can simply alert the user to it and give a less extensive but nicer-to-read history in the document itself.

If you open the DocBook source of this Guide (src/docs/firebirddocs/docwriting-howto.xml) in your favourite XML editor, you can easily copy-and-paste the Document History and License Notice into your own document. Don't copy the examples given above; copy the real appendices at the end of the document, and edit them to fit your work.

License Notice and Document History both appear at the end of the document. If you want to make your copyright obvious right from the start, you may also include a short copyright notice in the document's xxxinfo, like this:

<bookinfo>
  <title...
  <author...
  <edition...
  <copyright>
    <year>2003</year>
    <year>2004</year>
    <holder>Tootsie Griff</holder>
  </copyright>
</bookinfo>

Such a notice does not replace the License Notice and/or Document History – it's an extra.

Instead of providing the URL, you can also attach the entire PDL to your document. This may especially be useful if your work is a book or long article and you expect (or hope) that people will print it and distribute hardcopies. On a short document the PDL may be a little heavy, but it's your call.

You can get the PDL's DocBook source from src/docs/firebirddocs/licenses.xml. Please note that only the section with the license text itself (including the generic license notice ) belongs to the PDL proper. The Introduction is not part of the license.

If you include the PDL in your document, you can fill in the blanks in section 5.2 of the license. But you may also leave them as they are (provided your name is in the License Notice) or just fill in “the Initial Writer” or “the Copyright holder”.

Translating a document is a form of modification. So, as a translator, you should:

You don't have to translate the PDL itself. But if you do:

You can optionally also attach the translated PDL to the document itself, if you don't mind the extra load and bloat.