Re: Replace the TC power to depose maintainers

[Matthew Woodcraft]

On 2016-12-05 20:57, Philip Hands wrote:
> Tollef Fog Heen  writes:

>> ]] Ian Jackson 
>>> That is 6+ weeks' more stop-energy.  6+ weeks' more inaction.  6+
>>> weeks during which members of the TC have been prevaricating.

>> What are you accusing the TC of lying about?

> I think that British English has drifted into using that as a synonym
> for procrastinate while American English seems to have stuck to its
> earlier meaning (judging by the online dictionary entries I see).

There has evidently been drift in both languages.


The current full Oxford English Dictionary lists only two senses (when
used as an intransitive verb) as non-obsolete:

a. To deviate from straightforwardness; to speak or act in an evasive
way; to quibble, equivocate.
(with citations back to 1623)

b. To behave evasively or indecisively so as to delay action; to
procrastinate.
(with citations back to 1854)

It says that the second is "now the usual sense".


I can find some American dictionaries which strengthen sense 'a' to
include "deliberately mislead" or even "lie", but that is not standard
British usage.

-M-

Re: What do you win by moving things to non-free?

[Matthew Woodcraft]

Wouter Verhelst wrote:
A more realistic example would be

Answer: Because the document contains an invariant section on the
   author's opinion regarding the dangers of Software Patents in
   the European Union.

Something like that simply is not free. It might be true at the time the
piece is written; However, should the situation regarding Software
Patents in the European Union ever change, then there are three
possibilities:

[...]

* The Invariant Section is retained, but another Invariant Section
  containing a rebuttal is added to the document. This would a) look
  silly, and b) be a beginning of Invariant Section bloat, in which a
  document could consist of 10% Invariant Sections, 60% rebuttals to
  Invariant Sections, and 30% of actual, useful, documentation.

I do not think this option is as bad as you make it sound. There is no
need for the rebuttal to be made invariant, and the rebuttal could just
be a brief note explaining that the invariant section refers to a
situation which has gone away.

-M-


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