simpleLinux Open Documentation License (sLODL)

[Dave J Woolley]

> From:	SamBC [SMTP:sambc at nights.force9.co.uk]
> 
> http://www.simplelinux.org/legal/sLODL.html
> 
> Opinions on OS-ness and legality, and general good/badness, pls
> 
	[DJW:]  The HTML is invalid, although it makes an
	exceptionally good attempt to use elements for their
	intended purpose (possibly top 2 percentile in that
	respect!).

"Transparent Media/Format" - Any format/media of storage in which the text
and graphics are machine-readable and editable, using programs which are
available both free of charge and free from restrictions of use (eg HTML,
plain ASCII text, XML where the document data type is 'free'). 

	You mean document type defintion, not document data type.  A
	"free" DTD is not sufficient as DTDs only define the
	mechanically checkable syntax rules not the semantics.
	There is an alternative, called schemas, that goes a lot
	more towards semantics, but I've still to read up on them.
	With a DTD, it might be possible to make Word 2000 "HTML"
	comply with this example.

	HTML is too loose.  Often people mean a combination of the
	tags from published HTML DTDs with proprietory tags (often
	in an order that cannot possibly be described by a DTD or is
	not descibed by the one they claim), with GIFs, JPEGs, 
	Javascript and styles sheets.  Many may even include Flash and
	other ActiveX components.

	People may consider Word 2000 "HTML" (even though it is really
	XML and requires Word to edit sensibly) as HTML.

	Particularly if you include proprietory elements, you need 
	commercial browsers, which have export restrictions with respect
	to about half a dozen countries.

	The HTML document may well be auto-generated and not the true
	revisable form document.

	The examples exclude much more open SGML document types than 
	HTML, like docbook.

	The images associated with HTML may well not be the revisable form
	(as well as the GIF patent problem).  The revisable form may 
	contain layers or may be in a vector drawing format.


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