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From: eggert@dew.twinsun.com (Paul Eggert)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: The Official Word on Citations in FSF Works
Message-ID: <1990Jul3.111026.19698@twinsun.com>
Date: 3 Jul 90 11:10:26 GMT
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I don't mind if the GAWK manual's authors decided to not cite the AWK book
for editorial reasons like ``The AWK book is redundant,'' or even
``We don't want footnotes or references, because they turn users off.''
There is precedent for lack of citations in language reference manuals;
see [1], for example.

But to refuse to cite a book purely for political reasons smacks of censorship,
and in the long run a reputation for censorship will hurt the FSF far more than
a few impure references to non-free works.  The FSF should be sensitive to the
traditions of scholarly publication, because they are natural and powerful
allies of the FSF's goals.

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[1]  Adele Goldberg and David Robson, Smalltalk-80: the language and its
implementation.  Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley (1983).