Peter Saint-Andre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Ben Finney wrote: > > On the contrary, "software" is more sensibly contrasted with > > "hardware", and covers any information in digital form — whether > > that information happens to be interpreted as a program, an audio > > stream, a text document, some other kind of digital data, or > > several kinds at once. > > Within the context of our developer community, it is pretty clear > what is a specification and what is software.
In that community, it is pretty clear what is a specification and what is a program. Both programs and the specification documents, when encoded in a digital form, are software, like any other digitally-encoded information. It would make your task of choosing a well-understood license easier if you instead used "softwaree" in its original, contrastted-with-hardware meaning, and not the narrow "programs only" meaning that some retrofit to it. > Indeed, a XEP defines a wire protocol, which can be implemented in > software, hardware, or a network-aware service. So as far as I can > see, it is even more important for the XSF to clearly specify that > the protocols it produces can be instantiated in software, hardware, > or services. But the XSF itself does not produce software. The XSF might not produce *programs*, but if it produces digitally-encoded information — documents, specifications, messages, or whatever — then it produces software that is copyrighted by default, and can be licensed under free software license terms. -- \ "Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are | `\ willing to go through hell to get it." -- Donald Robert Perry | _o__) Marquis | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
