arnold@audiofax.com (Arnold Robbins) (06/07/90)
(To those of you on gnu.misc.discuss, this started in comp.sources.d;
followups are to gnu.misc.discuss.)
Let's set the record straight on the facts, and then move on to other topics.
Wm> Seen while browsing the source for gawk:
Wm> X@comment We don't refer people to non-free information
Wm> X@comment In 1988, the original authors
Wm> X@comment published @cite{The AWK Programming Language} (Addison-Wesley, ISBN
Wm> X@comment 0-201-07981-X), as a definitive description of the @code{awk} language.
Wm> Not too friendly given they later thank Brian Kernighan for his help
Wm> with gawk.
In article <ZOO.90Jun6142322@aps3.spa.umn.edu> zoo@aps3.spa.umn.edu (david d [zoo] zuhn) writes:
>I don't speak for the FSF nor the authors of gawk, but I would say
>that the non-free information they spoke of was the original paper and
>man page from V7 awk, which is not redistributable as far as I know.
>On the other hand, the book certainly is free, in the sense that there
>is no licensing agreements that you need to buy to get access to it.
The quoted part of the gawk manual is from my revisions to it. I wanted
to cite the awk book by Aho et. al., but RMS said not to. The book is
not "free" in the FSF sense: I can buy a copy, but I cannot legally make
1000 photo-copies and give them away; although the book was produced from
machine-readable source, said source is not available nor freely distributable.
In practice it makes little difference, as everyone knows that there is
an awk book and can buy (or borrow) a copy if they want it.
As for BWK, he was very helpful, and it is fair to give him credit for
his help; it is orthogonal to the issue of citing his book.
As to whether or not RMS is "right" or "wrong", I don't care to debate
(i.e. flame > /dev/null). Part of participating in the GNU project is
playing by their rules.
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