<posted & mailed> Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 04:32:11PM -0700, Andre Lehovich wrote: >> The latest version (1.67, 20 May 2004) now allows >> modification, "so long as any conflicts with the standard >> are clearly marked as such in the text". > > This seems to be reasonable. It's also right up against the line - a > stronger requirement would be a problem. I explained why I think it's non-free.... > I'm not really comfortable > with it, and would be happier if it said something like: > > "If modifications are made which conflict with the standard, then > either these modifications must be clearly marked, or references to > the standard must be removed, such that the resulting work does not > misrepresent the standard." Kudos to Andrew for coming up with such a good expression of a free version of the same clause. Basically, for the manpages to be Free, you should be able to use them for totally non-POSIX purposes, and with the clause as written, it seems that you can't. I hope IEEE would be willing to change that, since they were willing to change the license once. :-) This actually seems to be a recurring blind spot in people who think they're writing free licenses; they only consider the most common reason for making derivative works of their work, and accidentally prohibit or put ridiculous restrictions on making other derivative works. Perhaps it deserves a FAQ? -- There are none so blind as those who will not see.
