Re: Debian's Linux kernel continues to regress on freedom
* Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> [070912 15:04]:
> These are "official" protocol specifications. If you want to
> summarize the RFC, do it in a separate document.
Let's consider some use cases:
* You want to use some protocol that is mostly the same as some RFC, but
with some things changed and some names exchanged to fit what you do.
Then you either have to
- refer to the RFC and give some complex list of subsitutions. That's
nice as additional point, but people wanting to read this would be
much more helped if there was an applied text.
- rewrite the whole text, hoping you never overlook something and miss
some detail of the original you would want to keep. (Well, you could
tell that the original with those substitutions has priority, but even
then everybody would just read the new text, implement some bugs, and
you have to tell people to remove those bugs they inserted because
your rewriting of the text had an oversight).
* You are wanting to write the documentation for your (or somebody's else)
implementation of the RFC. If one is not that firm in english, it's
often easiest to just start with the standard description and modify
some words here, add some more descriptions there, omit some special
cases not applicable, rearrange the sentences a bit and have some nice
looking text using notations and phrases people not speaking your
language but the one you are writing in can understand. And one gets
using the proper standard terms for free. (And before you even start
with fair use and citing, please note that not everyone has that
privilege and citing often means verbatim in some jurisdictions).
Not being allowed those is a restriction harming people (more work) and
those they want to help (less useable documents), without any good
reason. (apart from "It's my preccciooous standard")
> > Only you are talking about willy-nilly changes... besides we as Debian
> > only want our users the freedom to be able to if they wanted it, to
> > willy-nilly modify the RFC text.
>
> I'm shaking my head in stunned disbelief.
Imagine freedom of speach was only for serious speach, and willy-nilly
speach was not protected. Would you be comfortable with that?
(If you are still answering yes, consider someone has to decide what is
willy-nilly and what not).
> > Note that it still would be perfectly possible to restrict the use of
> > 'RFC' for these modifications...
And just to put another reminder: noone is requeasting allowing
modifications posing as unmodified official standards. It's about
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
--
"Never contain programs so few bugs, as when no debugging tools are available!"
Niklaus Wirth
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