[Gcl-devel] Re: Odd idea...

[Camm Maguire]

Greetings!  I think this idea is great and not odd at all.  It is
entirely likely that acceptable terms of distribution of dpANS were
established long ago, but because no one can prove it now, we find
ourselves in this lamentable situation of not being able to include it
in our releases..  Just fyi, we are in contact with the people at ansi
on this subject, and have been for the past year.  We've recently
received some response which appears directed at a different but
related issue.  Now that the dialogue is at least flowing, I would
like to bring it to a conclusion quickly one way or another and then
discuss on this list how to proceed from here.

Take care, 

C Y <address@hidden> writes:

> I'll blame this idea on Tim Daly, since he's been infecting me with the
> literate programming bug - I have a rather outlandish question for the
> GCL devs:
> 
> Is there any chance that the GCL source code could be combined with the
> last ANSI draft spec into literate documents?  Obviously this wouldn't
> be either an official ANSI standard or even a draft but if it is
> permissible to include and work off of the draft of the spec, perhaps
> the spec, updates to the spec based on current standards, the code that
> implements any given part of the spec, and Paul's test that that part
> is functioning correctly could all be woven together into a coherent,
> self documenting whole.  
> 
> My other question - would this be a legal use of the ANSI draft
> documents?  The best answer I have found to this question thus far
> seems to be this post:  
> http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/5828f58fa34e2ce8 
> which basically seems to say it's unclear.
> 
> Would it be possible to contact the interested parties and try to
> formally get the draft spec under public domain?  Obviously a major
> expensive effort wouldn't be workable but if the intent was already to
> release it as public domain perhaps finalizing that release could still
> be done.
> 
> Cheers,
> CY
> 
> P.S. - The above question actually raises another one - since in one
> sense it could be argued that any compliant ANSI Lisp distribution in
> effect is an instance of the spec, how can one be ANSI compliant and
> still open source, given the ANSI folks keep control over the spec
> documents and (AFAIK) prevent republishing them?  Is it only human
> readable versions of the spec that have trouble?  How "different" does
> some instance of the spec have to be to be in the clear?
> 
> 
>               
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> 

-- 
Camm Maguire                                            address@hidden
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  --  Baha'u'llah