RE: Do you give permission to use your materials?

[Darren Barefoot <dbarefoot -at- mpsbc -dot- com>]

Hi,

We let customers modify our documentation all the time. This includes
customization, translation, re-formatting, etc. We simply don't have the
resources to handle these issues internally, so we pretty much have an
open-door policy. If a company is going to pay 100 grand to roll out our
software on an enterprise-wide implementation,  they deserve to be able to
mess with the manuals.

It hasn't happened yet, but I could see someone coming back down the road
and saying "this has your logo on it, but it doesn't work the way you've
written it." Of course, the customer can modify the program as well, so
often the software and the documentation are out of sync. A bit troubling,
but so far we haven't encountered any serious problems. DB.

-----Original Message-----
From: Megan Golding [mailto:megan -dot- golding -at- dvtsensors -dot- com]
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2000 12:04 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Do you give permission to use your materials?


<snippage>

Do any techwhirlers give permission to others to use what they've written?
Does anyone see any really big pitfalls to this "open" approach where I make
my document source available to others to mold for their own uses?