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From: mash@mips.COM (John Mashey)
Newsgroups: comp.benchmarks
Subject: Re: benchmark evaluations
Message-ID: <44201@mips.mips.COM>
Date: 19 Dec 90 03:32:35 GMT
References: <12220@hubcap.clemson.edu> <44157@mips.mips.COM> <6434@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
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Reply-To: mash@mips.COM (John Mashey)
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In article <6434@mace.cc.purdue.edu> abe@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Vic Abell) writes:
>In article <44157@mips.mips.COM>, mash@mips.COM (John Mashey) writes:
.....
>These rules apply to all SPEC license holders, not just vendors.  As I
>noted in my previous posting, license holders are more constrained in
>reporting SPEC numbers than others, since the SPEC license agreement
>specifies a reporting format that takes 8 pages to describe.

>The interesting question is whether or not a SPEC license holder must
>follow the format when reporting others' SPEC results.  If so, then it
>might be hard to avoid violating copyright.
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think this is a problem.
	a) It would be a problem if you copied the form, filled it in,
	and represented it as being printed by SPEC (but not for copyright
	reasons).
	b) Although it takes a while to describe, it's pretty easy
	to make up a form like the SPEC form (which, after all, is
	basically a common-sense checklist) and fill in the numbers.
	One can make up a spreadsheet that is perfectly adequate in
	a few minutes to do this.
	c) If you copied an existing form, whited out all of the entries,
	and copied again to make a up a form you write into, that would
	probably work too, and I doubt that anyone would care in the slightest.

>Of course, none of this stops non-licensees (or marketers) from citing
>SPEC reports in any fashion.  :-)

Let me try another way: all of these rules were basically put together
to avoid marketing gimmickry, and provide more meaningful disclosures,
in some cases, just by reminding people that things like compiler
release just might be meaningful, and are often lost.
A lot of this follows the sorts of disclosures that many straightforward
vendors have tried to work into their performance documents,
so it's hardly new.
-- 
-john mashey	DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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