Re: GFDL freedoms
On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 01:44:22AM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 09:21:42AM +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 05:34:51PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> > > duplicated, or a blanket grant to include anything in main. As best we
> > > know so far, there is no useful point between these (unmodifiable or
> > > unredistributable documents are not considered useful).
> >
> > I disagree. Standards documents, even if unmodifiable, are useful.
>
> A specification that cannot be updated is not 'useful', it's 'disaster
> waiting to happen'. Suddenly when you want to add ipv6 support, you
> find that you have to throw the specification away and write a new one
> from scratch.
You wrote 'specification', I wrote 'standards documents'.
Standards documents (eg RFCs) are useful references, even if you can't
change them. Like when writing software that needs to implement the
standards.
*We* don't add IPv6 support to standards documents just by changing
those documents. Instead you go to the standards body, propose a change,
it gets discussed etc and then ratified if everyone likes it. Then a new
document is published.
Yes, it would be useful to be able to clone existing standards documents
as the basis for new standards. So you can make your Suffieldv6 protocol
for the exchange of utter drivel without having to start from scratch.
Of course you must rename your document because it's no longer the
standard; you can't actually change a standard just by editing the
document.
Matthew Wilcox said the IETF RFCs don't allow you to clone and edit them
unless you are working within the IETF, which is unfortunate.
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>
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