Skip to the content
Documentation
Manuals

Free documentation: use it to help yourself and others

This help is free documentation under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 or later.

  • Topic type: Concept
  • For: Visitors Editors Administrators Developers
  • doc.help.free-documentation
  • Last changed
  • JSON
On this page

The help you are reading is free documentation. It is published under the GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.3 or any later version, the license the Free Software Foundation wrote for manuals and guides. "Free" here is about freedom, not price: you may use these pages, pass them on and make them better, and so may everyone you pass them on to.

This page explains in plain words what that lets you do. It is a summary, not legal advice: the license text is what counts. Read it in the help (GNU Free Documentation License 1.3) or on the web at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html. Who holds the copyright, and which older pages keep different terms, is on The license of this documentation.

What you can do

Read and study it

Read any page as often as you like, for any purpose: to learn the system, to train for a job, to prepare a course or to check how something works before you change it. No permission is needed to read or study.

Copy it and share it with other users

You may copy pages, or the whole documentation, and give or send the copies to anyone, on paper or as files, for free or for a fee, in any medium. Print a page for a colleague, put the guides on your intranet, attach a page to a support ticket, or hand a printed set to the editors of your team. When you do, keep with every copy:

  • the copyright notices of the pages,
  • the license notice, the paragraph that says the GNU Free Documentation License applies, and
  • a copy of the license itself (the file doc/eng-us/LICENSE-GFDL-1.3.txt, or the license's text in the same document).

Do not add conditions of your own, and do not use technical measures (copy protection, for example) that stop the people you give copies to from reading or copying them further.

If you give out more than 100 copies in a format that is hard to edit, such as a PDF without its source, you also have to provide an editable copy (the Markdown files of doc/ serve), or tell readers where they can get one. More than 100 printed copies need a cover that shows the full title and names you as the publisher. Section 3 of the license gives the details.

Translate it

A translation is a modified version of the documentation (see the next section), so it is allowed on the same terms. You may also translate the license notices; the original English text of the license and of the notices must go with your translation, and where the two differ, the English original counts.

Adapt and improve it, and share your version

You may change pages: correct them, shorten them, extend them, rewrite them for your own site or team, or take sections into your own manual. You may share your changed version as well, as long as:

  • your version is published under the same license, the GNU Free Documentation License, so that the people who receive it get the same freedoms you had;
  • it keeps the copyright notices of the original and adds your own notice for your changes;
  • it says that it was changed, and by whom (the license asks for the authors of the changes in the title page and a "History" section that lists the versions);
  • it carries the license notice and a copy of the license;
  • it does not pretend to be the original: give your version a title of its own, unless the publisher of the original agrees that you keep its title.

Section 4 of the license lists every condition for modified versions.

Combine it with other works

You may put these pages next to other, independent documents in a collection or on the same medium (on a website with your own pages, or a training folder with your slides). The license of these pages does not extend to your own, independent works; it applies to the pages from this documentation and versions made from them.

Cite it

Point to a page by its title and its address in the help, or by its file in the repository (doc/eng-us/help/getting-started.md, for example). Quoting a short passage with its source is normally possible under copyright law anyway; when you copy whole pages or large parts, follow the conditions above.

Help others

Free documentation gets better every time someone uses one of these freedoms and shares the result.

  • Share what helped you. When a page solved your problem, send it to the next person with the same question.
  • Report what is wrong. If a page is out of date, unclear or wrong, tell the project: Help, Report an error shows where and how.
  • Contribute your fixes back. Every help page has an Edit on GitHub link to its source file. Correct it and open a pull request (Develop with Git shows how, step by step). A change to these pages is accepted under the same license, the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 or any later version, so it stays free for everyone.
  • Offer your translation. A translated page helps every reader of that language; contribute it the same way.

If the conditions are not kept

The license gives these freedoms on its conditions. Someone who copies, changes or shares the documentation in a way the license does not allow loses the rights the license gave them; section 9 of the license explains how those rights come back once the problem is fixed.

Older pages with their own terms

A few older files in doc/, inherited from the documentation of the original software by eZ Systems, are not under this license; the help shows their own notice on those pages. The license of this documentation lists them.

Since 29 October 2026 the copyright of Exponential is held by the Exponential Foundation and 7x together, the Foundation named first: "Exponential Copyright © 1998-2026 Exponential Foundation and 7x", in files "Copyright (C) 1998 - 2026 Exponential Foundation and 7x. All rights reserved." Who holds it and why, what the GPL lets you do, the third-party notices that stay and how to write the notice in new files and extensions: Copyright and copyleft.

Was this helpful?

Only your answer is kept, not who you are.

Something wrong on this page? Report an error