GFDL for TEI Guidelines

[Syd Bauman]

As you may recall, I sent a query to the FSF about how we might adapt
the GFDL to our circumstances, in particular to meet our desire to
permit any and all to modify their own copies of the Guidelines so
long as the result isn't advertised to be "TEI conformant". David had
recommended that we do this by making chapter 28 "Conformance" an
invariant section. The problem is, the GFDL has strict rules for what
does and does not qualify as an invariant section, and I suspected
that chapter 28 did not qualify. Thus the query to FSF.

The FSF recently responded to my query confirming my suspicion that
we cannot simply make chapter 28 invariant. However, he (David Turner,
GPL Compliance Engineer) did have a suggested way to do what we want
(the text preceded by ">" is part of my original query):

| > * If not, what sort of alterations to the conformance chapter would
| >   be necessary for it to qualify for invariant status?
| 
| Here's my idea:  You have two concepts: 
| 
| 1. X, Y, and Z are the technical and legal aspects of conformance
|    with this standard;
| 
| 2. The text of the conformance requirements as published by the TEIC
|    describes the only official TEIC conformance requirements. If this
|    text is modified, it doesn't describe anything having to do with
|    TEIC.
| 
| The first is technical; the second is administrative. You could make
| the second section invariant, while leaving the first as an ordinary
| section. This would allow people who create standards based on the
| TEIC standard to also use the TEIC conformance requirement text as
| the basis for their text.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what this means myself. :-)

<p>He also adds:

| Further, you could create some sort of symbol or seal which can be
| used only on TEIC-conformant products, and explain (by reference to
| the standards version published by TEIC) the requirements for use
| of this seal.