Let me preface my comments with this statement. I am not a grammar
lawyer, but I consider myself adept. There are a few rules of thumb I
tend to follow when writing bland technical documents and legalease.
1. BE SUCCINCT. Remove extraneous prepositional phrases and color
words.
2. KEEP YOUR GOALS IN MIND and WRITE WHAT YOU MEAN. Understand what
you're trying to say. Don't get caught up in length explainations
(Rule 1). Write EXACTLY and ONLY what you mean.
IMHO, the SC is already an unnecessarily verbose document. Most of the
changes Raul introduces are grammatically expensive. I am not going to
nit pick every change, rather I'll concentrate on the first few to
illustrate my point.
On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 01:10:32AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> Third sentence -- added free software to this statement of support.
> I think this is important as a part of keeping non-free software
> in perspective.
>
> Old: We will support our users who develop and run non-free
> software on Debian, but we will never make the system depend on
> an item of non-free software.
>
> New: We will also support our users who develop and run other
> software on Debian -- free or non-free -- but we will never make
> the system depend on non-free software.
The use of "other software" is vague, forcing the reader to search the
rest of the sentance to figure out what you mean. The original version
was much clearer in its intent, but to be fair, it's repetitve nature
lacks grace. IMHO, you can not "depend on" something, rather you can
"depend upon" something. Yes, I know there are examples of both, and I
did prefix the last statement with IMHO.
New: We will support our users who develop and run non-free
software on Debian, but we will never make the system depend
upon such works.
Personally, I like this better. Another alternative is to expand the
phrase "other software".
New: We will also support our users who develop and run software
that is not distributed as part of Debian. However, we will
never make the system depend upon such works.
We've already stated that we only distribute software that meets DFSG
requirements. There's no reason to be repetitive. It's not DFSG
compliant, we don't distribute it. The last sentance, IMHO, isn't
needed, since it's explicitly stated in the first part of the SC.
> Section 5.
> Sentence 1 -- added a statement that not all of our users depend
> on non-free software. This is a part of keeping the non-free
> distribution in perspective.
>
> Old: We acknowledge that some of our users require the use
> of programs that don't conform to the Debian Free Software
> Guidelines.
>
> New: We acknowledge that some, but not all, of our users require
> the use of software which does not conform to the Debian Free
> Software Guidelines.
"but not all" is extraneous fluff. "which" is often misused; replace
with "that". We can be less verbose and say the same thing. Remove
"the use of".
New: We acknowledge that some of our users require software that
do not conform with the DFSG.
Etc.
--
Chad Walstrom <chewie@wookimus.net> http://www.wookimus.net/
assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */
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