Re: Beginner

[Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>]

Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> writes:
> In article <83lfe1$v6i$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>   Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> > If someone would independently html'ize the LRM, I'd never
> > need to visit adahome again.
> 
> Seeing as the HTML version of the RM is clearly a derived work
> which can only be distributed if the conditions of the original
> author are met (see copyright notice in the RM), it seems clear
> that this is either not distributable at all, or is freely
> distributable. Since it is on the web site, it seems reasonable
> to assume that it it freely distributable, and that the terms
> of the original copyright notice apply.

RM Copyright Notice:

RM> Copyright (C) 1992,1993,1994,1995  Intermetrics, Inc.
RM> 
RM> This copyright is assigned to the U.S. Government.  All rights
RM> reserved.
RM> 
RM> This document may be copied, in whole or in part, in any form or
RM> by any means, as is or with alterations, provided that (1)
RM> alterations are clearly marked as alterations and (2) this
RM> copyright notice is included unmodified in any copy.  Compiled
RM> copies of standard library units and examples need not contain
RM> this copyright notice so long as the notice is included in all
RM> copies of source code and documentation.

There is no obligation of making anything "freely available" as far as
I can tell. 

Magnus Kempe owns the copyright on the HTML annotations, and the
license prohibits making the HTML version available on any public web
site (intranet or ftp mirror of the tar.gz version is allowed
though). It is my understanding that he also produced a version with
annotations which available commercially only.

It is on my project list to write an Ada 95 program that takes the
Annotated Ada RM ASCII version (plus may be official and pending AI)
and automatically produces an HTML version, and may be have an
integrated GtkAda AARM browser with nice search capabilities. Not
started yet... May be it could make a good student project though,
exposing string/parsing => some internal structure => HTML output, and
OO GUI with GtkAda or JVM as a second project (GUI, reuse, indexing,
searching).

The HTML version of the Rationale I wrote (by hand plus emacs regexps
from the ASCII file) has no such restriction, and is freely available
to anyone for any use BTW.

--LG