On 05 July 2000, Rob W. W. Hooft said:
> Then 2 points on distutils:
> - the word "licence" is used throughout, and "license" is introduced as
> alternative. The other way around looks more natural to me.
In American English, "license" is both noun and verb. In the rest of
the world, "licence" is the noun and "license" the verb. Hence, I might
license you to use my software with the GNU General Public Licence.
(Except that the FSF is American, so they don't use "licence". Oops.)
Alternately: when I moved to the US, I traded in my Canadian driver's
licence for an American license. (Except that I lived in Quebec, and
had a permis de conduire. Oops again!)
I am not American, so I do not use American English in source code or
documentation, and strive to avoid it in everyday speech. ;-) If an
overwhelming majority insists on American spellings in source code,
command-line options, documentation, and the like, then I *might* give
in, but only reluctantly. There is more than one way to use the English
language, and just because the most populous (and richest, and most
heavily-armed, etc.) English-speaking nation does it one way doesn't
mean we should all do it that way.
Bottom line: when used as a noun, "licence" and "license" should be
accepted equally. This is currently the case on the Distutils
command-line, but I'm not sure if it holds in the setup script. Will
check.
> - the term "anal retentives" should probably be replaced before 2.0
Oh c'mon, if it's just in *comments* is anyone really going to be
offended? Where is it, anyways?
Anyways, why is the guy who combs the source code looking for spelling
errors complaining about the use of "anal retentive"? Perhaps it cuts a
little close to home? >evil grin<
(Sorry, that was uncalled for -- but irresistable. Nothing personal, of
course!)
Greg
--
Greg Ward - software developer gward@mems-exchange.org
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