The Ministry of Truth has been active. I find this unsettling:
--- regex-0.12/COPYING Sun Jun 2 21:03:17 1991
+++ ed-0.4/COPYING Thu May 12 09:01:24 2005
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
- 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
+ 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
@@ -279,7 +279,7 @@
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
- Appendix: How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
+ How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
@@ -291,7 +291,7 @@
the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
- Copyright (C) 19yy
+ Copyright (C)
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
@@ -305,14 +305,15 @@
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
- Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
+ Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
+
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
when it starts in an interactive mode:
- Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 19yy name of author
+ Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.
Re:Why?
nicholas on 2007-02-28T23:48:11
I agree that they're not significant changes. But I don't like the fact that they have made changes to the document without any of
It may well be administrative oversight, but I'm not comfortable with a system that lets the public master copy of one of the most important documents on the Internet get changed, without any clear indication that it's been changed.
- noting in the document that changes have been made
- changing the version number of the document
- serving the document from a different URL
These changes are minor and innocent. But if minor innocent changes can slip by, so, potentially, can minor less-than-innocent changes.