Re: LCS Copyright et al'
On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Jarrod K Henry wrote:
> The product in question is a standard, NOT a program. If something is used to
> validate a standard, it is part of the STANDARD.
> In this case, DFSG covers SOFTWARE, not standards.
I disagree.
Software is software even if you try to make it part of a standard.
If the validation software has a bug, it is not a bug in the standard, it
is a bug in the software. Then you would have to choose: The standard or
the validating software. I would much prefer to be able to patch the
validating software to match the standard than having to throw both
of them because of a clear inconsistency between them.
> So we've got to decide what to do with this
> standard. Another example of this is the HTML validators. If we changed one
> of those to recognize NETSCAPE and IE tags, it wouldn't be an HTML 4.0
> validator, will it?
Good example :-) If a HTML validator is a program, it may have bugs.
Everybody should be able to fix them, not just the copyright holder.
> Standard validators CANNOT be modified, because doing so could potentially
> change the standard.
Ok, just write "If you modify this, don't call it standard anymore"
in the license, but there is no need to make it non-free software.
--
"6851f1691c4eb88aad8257d3898c5859" (a truly random sig)
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