"Aaron Turner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote...
<begin>
I guess my problem is that I don't ever want to be in the position where
the "best thing to do" is pull the document...... You get a really 
prolific writer who wants to maintain
control, but has every intention to open up the license when he/she no
longer can maintain it, but then has a heart attack or gets hit by a bus,
and all you can do is say, "Well that sucks." and pull it three months
later when it no longer applies/works.
<end>

I have seen a couple of examples where someone has actually set up an "Online 
Will" where they have appointed some friend, or Group to take over their 
documents/website should they become unable to do so.

I would agree that their should be Someone who takes responsibility to keep 
up the accuracy of every document, and that that person may wish at least a 
few restrictions to ensure that outright errors do not get associated with 
their name.  On the other hand, these same folks would not want to see their 
work disappear just because they were to go off-line.

For Deb's purpose, perhaps the rule might be to require that there be a 
mechanism to deal with this problem included in the authors copyright 
statement or licence clause.  If nothing else, this would require folks to 
consider the possibility of being swamped/sick/whatever.  

An handy way out could be provided in the form of assigning the 
responsibility to revise the document to OSWG.ORG if the author cannot be 
contacted after X weeks of trying, so that the OSWG site maintainer can pass 
the document on to a new author in that case.  I assume Deb has at least a 
few folks in mind if she can't keep up the site.

The other way out of Aaron's dilemma would be to distribute the now 
out-of-date document in a wrapper, or with a prefix.   "Here is the standard 
document on compiling SSL, please note that after version x.y.z the order 
that the modules are compiled  has changed to (A,B,C) because of a change in 
(q) - the rest of the procedure is the same."


Charles MacDonald - Labour Information Management
< My own Opinion unless Otherwise Credited >

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