What RMS says about standards (was: [rms@gnu.org: Re: Questions regarding free documentation.]
Hello,
this is was RMS told me about this topic. I think it is relevant for the
discussion. It contains an example where a free standard would have been
useful and provides yet another solution for standard authors to protect
the integrity of their standard.
There are now many ways for authors to do this:
a) Require a name change.
b) Reuqire clear marks where the document has been changed.
c) Require original source with diff.
d) Require that a non-technical part is only shipped with the verbatim
standard (see below).
I think this is sufficient to address Manojs fears about the integritation
of the standard.
Manoj, if you still think that derived works will be problematic for the
community, despite the four possibilities above, it is your turn to give
technical arguments why the integrity of standard documents needs even more
protection.
Thank you,
Marcus
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Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 00:51:04 -0400
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From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
To: Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
To: bmbuck@acsu.buffalo.edu
In-reply-to: <199808130922.FAA06044@mescaline.gnu.org> (message from Buddha
Buck on Thu, 13 Aug 1998 05:21:45 -0400)
Subject: Re: Questions regarding free documentation.
Reply-to: rms@gnu.org
References: <199808130922.FAA06044@mescaline.gnu.org>
X-UIDL: 68fa4a88c2a28d7e824f5a62ef3ccc86
I agree there is a real practical use in enabling people to be sure
they have the official version of the standard.
On the other hand, making modified versions of standards documents is
extremely useful. Consider GNU C. It implements the ANSI C standard
(though it does not entirely conform unless you use certain options),
plus nonstandard extensions. We still don't have a manual for the GNU
dialect of the C language; we don't have any sort of C reference
manual to include in GNU systems. The ANSI C Standard as it stands is
not a correct reference for GCC, but if we were allowed to make a free
reference manual by modifying the ANSI C Standard, I am sure we would
have had one by 1990.
In general, we can expect technical standards documents to be very
useful in this way. A policy that puts them off limits for
modification is going to cause a major problem.
I have a suggestion for how to achieve both goals. This is to permit
modification of the document with the requirement that certain
non-technical sections (the ones that explain that it is a standard)
are *deleted* from any modified version. That way, people will be
free to modify it into documentation for the programs that come close
to implementing the standard. But people will still be able to have
confidence that the document which is labeled as the standard is the
real standard.
Feel free to forward this to other people if you think that is useful.
----- End forwarded message -----
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