🚀 go-pugleaf

David Kastrup (dak@mailhost.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de) wrote on
MDCCCLV September MCMXCIII in <URL:news:m2pvceao7r.fsf@mailhost.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>:
++ dblake@dylan.ucsf.edu (Dave Blake ) writes:
++ 
++ > Donal K. Fellows wrote:
++ > >Or does RMs hold the (IMHO ridiculous) position that if someone writes
++ > >a book about GNU Emacs, then the content of that book[*] should[**] be
++ > >given away free?  
++ > 
++ > Copylefted.
++ > 
++ > If someone like O'Reilly is printing good documentation books,
++ > it will act to prevent people from writing good free (or at
++ > least copylefted) ones.
++ > 
++ > This is my understanding of rms' take on documentation manuals.
++ 
++ More particular, it is his take on basically *essential*
++ documentation.  For example, Perl comes with a bunch of loosely
++ organized man pages and FAQ last time I looked, something from which
++ learning the language is not impossible, but rather difficult.  The
++ documentation copiously mentions that you might also want to acquire
++ the proprietary Camel book of O'Reilly.

The free, electronic documentation of Perl is far more accurate than
the Camel book. I doubt there's anything in the Camel that isn't in the
documentation (except for entries like "Perl poetry"); but he Camel
is two years old, documents Perl 5.003 while the free documentation
documents the current version of Perl and is updated whenever necessary.

As for the FAQ, take a close look at O'Reilly's newest Perl book: the Perl
Cookbook. See all the items from the book that trickled down during the
writing of the book back into the FAQ. Note that *all* code from the book
is Public Domain, and can be used in your code without *any* restrictions.

++ This is not the sort of free documentation RMS thinks desirable for
++ free software.  And he does not wish to have people thinking that free
++ software is complete without good and reasonably complete free
++ documentation accompanying it.

I challenge RMS to find anything technical in the Camel that isn't
explained in the documentation.

++ > The dude has ethics.

RMS is right that software should come with good, free documentation.
He's quite wrong if he thinks that's not the case with Perl.



Abigail