The Jargon File -- an apologia

[Eric S. Raymond]

Recently I've seen a number of postings attacking the Jargon File
project as overly commercial or an `ego trip', and email posing polite
questions about the copyright status of the material and future access
to it.

This posting will summarize the history of the project, describe the
present legal status of the material, the arrangements for disposition
of royalties, and the reasoning behind the actions I have taken to set
these up.

			HISTORY

This all started a little more than a year ago (Jan 1990) when I
snarfed a copy of jargon-1 off uunet.  I'd seen versions of the File
before, as far back as late 1976 when I was a turist on the ITS
machines.  It was very stimulating at the time, and I'd had a
sentimental fondness for it ever since then.

Somehow it'd been there in my consciousness for more than ten years
without it ever occuring to me that I could or should add stuff to it.
Of course, when I first saw it it was a lot closer to current and I
but a mere fledgling as a hacker.  But there it was, sitting in an
EMACS window...

So I started adding a couple entries as a casual weekend hack.  Then I
really got into it as I realized how *much* of the slang I'd come to
take for granted wasn't represented in there.  Before I knew it, I had
doubled the size of the file (it wasn't very large; less than 250 entries).

Clearly it was time to talk to someone and get these changes made
`official'.  Guy L. Steele was listed as the east coast maintainer, so
I tracked down his phone number and gave him a buzz.

Guy was friendly and supportive.  First thing he did was send me a
copy of the first paper edition of the file, his `The Hacker's
Dictionary' (Steele-1983; the First Edition).  We agreed to work
together on updating the file for 1990.  He set up a jargon alias on
think.com to reflect mail to him and myself; the idea was that he
would continue as `official' maintainer, I would coordinate a set of
revisions, we'd announce it to the world in a couple weeks and then
I'd go on to other things.

It was some time --- like, more than a month and two rounds of draft
posting and response collection later --- that the idea for a book
first came up.  Guy suggested it, explaining that an editor at MIT had
been after him for years to do a second edition.

I thought this was a fine idea, a suitable way to get the File to a
lot of people without net access.  I wasn't anticipating royalties (I
figured they'd be miniscule anyhow, the first book hadn't been a
market success) and assumed that Guy would continue to be listed as
principal author.  All I asked for was a `second billing' credit for
the revisions (at this point I had less than a hundred hours invested
in the work).  Guy mumbled something about putting the editor in touch
with me and we dropped the matter.  It lay there for quite a while.

Shortly after this I initiated the jargon-friends list to include the
other First Edition coauthors (Richard Frankel, Mark Crispin, Don
Woods, and Geoff Goodfellow).  Five responded encouragingly to the
initial list ping.  To our later sorrow, none of us registered the fact
that I got no response from Mark Cripin (the address I'd been given
turned out to lead to a black hole).

As I went through successive rounds of revision, it became clear that
there was enormous `pent-up demand' for a File revision.  The volume
of entries and supportive mail coming in was *huge*.  The file
tripled, then quadrupled in size.  The revision work began to cut
seriously into my time.  The revision had acquired a life of its own.

Sometime in there Guy and I decided to move the jargon alias to my
site, snark, because think.com had been flaking out and bouncing or
dropping a lot of mail.  I guess it was shortly after this that we
both confronted the fact that fact that, without really intending to,
I had taken over as the maintainer and contact person for the File.

It was not until after this, in the early winter of 1990 (sometime
shortly before I posted 2.1.5), that the idea of a book began to
seriously affect the direction of the project.  Three publishers got
wind of the project through various channels and approached me.  After
a couple of weeks of negotiation I agreed to work with MIT Press.

There were several factors in this.  The most important (to me) was
that MIT press, alone of the three, was willing to guarantee that I
could do the book on-line and via email, typesetting the book myself
and avoiding hassle with infinite rounds of paper galleys.  Guy's
recommendation also helped; Terry Ehling, the project editor I was
negotiating with, was the person who'd been pushing for revision 2 all
along and they were friendly.  And, in general, it seemed clear to me
that MIT Press wanted the book the most, and consciously enjoyed a special
relationship with the community it is meant to serve.

These were sufficient discriminants.  The cherry on top was that they
were offering better royalty rates than either of the other two
suitors!  By this point I'd put in hundreds of hours of work on the
project and the thought of actually realizing some income from it in
lieu of the consulting fees I could have been earning was beginning to
look attractive.

By mid-December we'd settled on contract terms and I was learning TeX.
I still hadn't formulated a proposal to the First Edition authors on
how credit and royalties should be handled, but nobody else had
either!  Everybody then on the list was cooperative and relaxed and I
felt willing to live with any consensus that might emerge.  The work
clearly seemed to all of us to be more important than arguing about
the proceeds.

Then we hit the first serious bump in the road --- Mark Crispin.  MRC
surfaced in alt.folklore.computers, spewing flames at me for allegedly
hijacking `his' File and not consulting any of the First Edition
authors about the revisions.  This piqued me more than somewhat,
because as far as I knew at the time he'd simply been directing my
requests for feedback on the jargon-friends lists to /dev/null.  I
threatened to drop him from the list unless he showed some willingness
to match his public criticisms with contributions where the work was
going on --- only to discover that he'd never received anything from
jargon-friends.  Unfortunately, this exchange set the tone for most of
our subsequent communications.

Also, in mid-December, I began to catch some heat from a cabal of
ex-ITSers inflamed by rumors that I was `revising history' and
contaminating the vital bodily fluids of true hackerdom (as
represented by its holy untouchable icon, the One True and Only
jargon-1).  Most of these people quited down after I posted an open
letter setting out the facts of the matter and my intentions;  a few
became friendly participants in the revision process.

Not till January of this year did we on jargon-friends seriously
address the whole copyrights and royalties thing.  I proposed a
formula under which a portion of royalties would be pro-rated to the
First Edition authors based on an average of the ratios of the old and
new entry counts and the old and new word sizes; reaction was
generally favorable (two of the six voters, in fact, expressed a
willingness to just trust me to do the right thing without a formal
agreement --- we'd been working together for months and there'd been
time for considerable mutual respect to develop).

MRC, who had just begun to participate in the list, opposed the
formula and insisted on a formal vote (our first).  The motion passed
with only his single dissent.  A motion endorsing the credits policy I
proposed passed by a similarly lopsided vote.  These, apparently, are
the experiences MRC refers to in his recent claim to have been
``shouted down''.  Me, I recall all parties in the business as having
been quite graceful and civilized, with one exception...

Since then, MRC hasn't called for any more votes, preferring to flame
me in public on a.f.c.  To give him his due, though, he *has* finally
coughed up a set of substantive changes for the File, which I am
using.

In mid-January I flew to Boston on the Press's tab, finally met Guy
face to face, and he and I and RMS and the Press people sealed our
bargain over pot-stickers at Mary Chung's.  Guy and I signed an
agreement which set out a royalty pro-rating formula and transferred
the copyright in Steele-1983 to me.

And that brings us nearly up to the present.  Five jargon-friends
members and I have been working harmoniously to finish the book, with
only occasional outbursts from MRC.  New material, commentary, and
support has continued to roll in; fortunately, the volume of actual
submissions has tapered off some.  The manuscript freeze will go down
on April 10; the book is well on track to be finished by then and will
go to press this summer.

			DISTRIBUTION POLICY

Throughout the revision process I have been at pains to open it up to
as many people as possible, even though this enormously multiplied the
amount of work for me to do.  Indeed, some are now suggesting that I
over-exposed the material, flooding the net and engaging in some sort
of ego trip.

Thank you; I'd rather be accused of this than take flames from a
hundred Crispinoids accusing me of ravishing the File in secret and
excluding people from consultation.  After my brief flap with the
ex-ITS crowd, is there anybody who seriously doubts this would have
happened if I'd played the cards much closer to my chest?

At the same time, I felt it would be a profound disservice to the net
to encourage the huge volume and nth-order flame wars that would have
ensued if I'd invited all submitters to post to a.f.c.  Not to mention
the justified annoyance a.f.c regulars would have felt at seeing
everything non-Jargon get lost in the noise...

So: the cover note for every draft asks people to mail submissions and
comment to me.  I try to respond to every contribution, and I post
drafts frequently so submitters can see that ``justice has been done''
and give me a fair argument if I haven't addressed their concerns.

This policy will continue up to the freeze deadline.

			COPYRIGHT STATUS

GLS copyrighted the text of Steele-1983, which is largely now
incorportated into the File.  We have signed an agreement which
transfers the Steele-1983 copyright to me.  Thus, I have clear legal
title to any book version, or any `derived work' incorporating
substantial material from it.  I had to do this so I could make a
legal contract with MIT Press.

The copyright status of the on-line version itself is murky.  There is
no copyright notice on it.  I think this means that you can mung it as
you like but not publish it in any way that would infringe the book
copyright.  In a practical sense, that's how I want things to stand.

The only change in policy I might make is to formally assert a
`compilation copyright' on 2.8.1 over a note explaining that this has
been done on behalf of the friends of the Jargon File, to protect it
from abuse by persons not legally and ethically in contract with
myself and the First Edition authors.

Such a notice, if added, would explicitly grant the right to modify
and circulate versions of the file as long as the credits and copright
notice are preserved, and some indication made that the version has
been changed.

		ROYALTIES AND COMMERCIAL ``EXPLOITATION''

Just to make it crystal clear, everybody:

	THIS PROJECT WAS NOT STARTED FOR MONEY

...and I'd still be doing it if there were no money in it.  I made it a
condition of my negotiations with all three publishers that approached
me that they not interfere with the free on-line distribution of the
text (it still surprises me that all three agreed).

I'm giving away most of my work for free by posting the on-line
version; if you purchase the book, you're buying the value-added from
nicely typesetting the material (and from my Preface and GLS's
Foreword and cartoons).

I started the on-line revision as a service to hackerdom, and I'm
still doing it because I want the work to be well done.  I've
explained above that the book was Guy Steele's idea, and that I had no
serious thought of monetary gain until well after I was personally
committed to the project.

Having signed the contract and accepted responsibility for the book,
however, I do insist on my right to enjoy compensation for the
hundreds of hours I have spent preparing the material for book
publication.  If you disagree, just don't buy the book!  The on-line
version will always be out there.

Despite some recent claims, I haven't ``rejected'' the idea of tithing
book royalties to LPF, as I think RMS will certify.  In fact, it is a
matter of record that I offered to match with a share from my own
percentage any assignment of royalties by any First Edition coauthor
to LPF.  So far nobody's taken me up on that.

What I *have* refused to do, on principle, is commit myself to sending
LPF money as a way of buying off opposition from people who don't
think I have a right to make any money at all from the work I've put
in.

			THE FUTURE

Someday, I expect to hand the evolving file to a third editor and
retire to the `elder statesman' role Guy Steele has now.  One reason
I've been careful about agreements and copyright and building a
consensus on policy is that I want to make the revision job both
feasible and rewarding for that editor.

I want to be able to hand off more than just ``apostolic succession''
and clear legal publication rights to the material; I want to hand
that person a tradition (expressed in my copyright assignment and the
documented history of the project) about how to meet the high
standards of quality and fairness that Guy set in producing
Steele-1983, and which I have tried to push even further.

On behalf of that person, and others who genuinely love hackerdom and
want to serve it, I ask all of you: don't cut us off from the market,
and don't accuse us of `egotism' for bending over backward to do a
hard job under public scrutiny.

If these kinds of attack succeed, they only guarantee that projects of
concern to the net will be done out of its sight --- or not done at all.
-- 
      Eric S. Raymond = eric at snark.thyrsus.com