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Subject:Industry Standard Plagiarism From:George Mena <George -dot- Mena -at- ESSTECH -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 8 Jul 1998 14:40:45 -0700
(Advance Disclaimer: If you're not hardware-oriented, feel free to skip
this post, as it deals with issues in the semiconductor world. Or read
on and comment at your leisure, either on-list or off-list. --George
Mena)
Checking out the comments on plaigiarism with respect to HTML tags
reminds me of the way some engineers in high tech companies -- and some
companies -- plagiarize designs and industry standards in order to make
their product shipping deadlines. It also brings up for me what is and
isn't a phenomenon that I'll call acceptable industry standard
plagiarism.
A quick look at a data book from a now-defunct semiconductor company
reveals descriptions of device characteristics that are quite literally
copied right out of an earlier version of the Intel AC'97 Audio Codec
component specification without attribution to the spec itself.
Specifically, such characteristics as cold reset timing, warm reset,
AC'97 connection to the digital AC'97 controller and the AC'97 digital
controller/codec interface
On one hand, it's *technically* plagiarism due to the lack of
attribution, if we actually bother to remember what our college
professors (and in my case, newspaper editors as well) told us about the
subject. On the other hand, Intel was only one of the five primary
developers of the component spec because other players (Analog Devices,
Creative Labs, National Semiconductor and Yamaha Corp.) also had a major
stake in the spec's development because *their* chips had to work with
the Intel devices commonly found on PC motherboards. These devices
include such silicon parts as distributed DMA controllers, CPUs,
keyboard controllers and the PCI-to-ISA bridge chips that have to be
compatible with the PCI Local Bus Specification.
It's no secret that a lot of semiconductor companies rely on
single-sourced and collaborative industry specs for development of their
own hardware specs. Not only does it help to keep the cost of
engineering cost of R&D down, but the design engineers can also develop
product based on the fact that they're working from proven technology
and adding their own unique features that will hopefully keep them out
of court.
At the same time, however, once a standard has been set for a particular
type of component, firms that make the part *have* to build to the
published industry standard to ensure 100% compatibility. Additionally,
using some of the text in the published industry standard as boilerplate
text is nearly a requirement in order for those engineering folks to
seriously consider the part for incorporation into their designs. And,
semiconductor companies that make so-called "knock-off" parts based on
other companies' products have to rely to an extent on the published
information in the competitors' data sheets. In explaining how their
products work, there's certainly a lot of care that has to be exercised
to describe the device functionality.
I'd be interested in knowing how other hardware writers in chip
companies deal with this, either on or off-list.
Thanks for your time.
George Mena
Technical Writing Consultant
George -dot- Mena -at- esstech -dot- com
ESS Technology, Inc.
Fremont, CA
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