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From: thor@stout.atd.ucar.edu (Rich Neitzel)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: The Official Word on Citations in FSF Works
Message-ID: <8015@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 18 Jul 90 13:57:21 GMT
References: <9886@odin.corp.sgi.com> <1990Jul3.111026.19698@twinsun.com> <3014@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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Reply-To: thor@stout.atd.ucar.edu (Rich Neitzel)
Organization: National Center for Atmospheric Research
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In article <3014@skye.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
|>In article <1990Jul3.111026.19698@twinsun.com> eggert@dew.twinsun.com
(Paul Eggert) writes:
|>>
|>> 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.
|>
|>Note that you have to say "smacks of censorship", because it isn't
|>in fact censorship.  Moreover, "political reasons" aren't necessarily
If I recall correctly, the book was cited in the original draft.
Therefore removing it is indeed censorship. 

|>However, authors are under no obligation to mention other works which
|>cover the same or similar material -- only works they have actually
|>used.  It is not necessary to follow the conventions of academic
|>documents (papers, theses, and the like), where part of the game is
|>to find related work, trace ideas to their source, etc.  Note too
|>that the inventors of AWK are given credit; it is just a particular
|>book that is not mentioned.  I don't think anyone has shown that
|>that book was plagiarized or used in any way in the preparation of
|>the GAWK manual.
I find it hard to believe that the book in question was not used in some
manner during the development of GAWK. The issue isn't simply whether it
was used to prepare the GAWK manual, but whether it was used as part of
the development of GAWK code. Now I find it hard it to believe that GAWK
was truely reverse-engineered in "clean-room" fashion. Most likely the
developers have read said book in order to further their understanding of awk. 
                                        
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