Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] Should and Shall in standards

[Mark A Peters]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2002, Andrew M Cohill wrote:

> >     It uses the words "you should not inlcude GIF's in..." it does *not* say
> >     "you cannot" or "you shall not". It says "should not", which implies an
> >     option.
> >
> >It is a requirement, not an option.  This file always states
> >requirements with "should not", never "cannot" or "shall not".  The
> >file uses "cannot" only for factual statements about what is possible,
> >and never uses "shall" at all.
> 
>   I was a member of the ANSI Standards Committee HFES-200 (Software 
> Ergonomics) for more than 10 years.
> 
> All ANSI standards  use "should" and "shall" in this way:
> 
> Should-- strongly encouraged to do it, but it is not required.
> 
> Shall--to be in compliance with the standard, you must do it.
> 
> We also were part of the ISO 9241 Standards Committee, and the 
> Europeans also followed this practice.
> 

This was a very big issue I seen when looking back at the FSF/GNU's view
of the GIF patent.  I know what the difference is by reading a "should
not" / "can not" or a "shall not", and there is no ambiguities by what is
meant.

Being a federal employee serving in the US military I see/write this style
of wording everyday in software requirements/system specs.  We have to
write our SRS in a very specific manner in an effort to explicitly
identify what we want/need from potential government contractors or other 
federal agencies.

Thanks,
Mark A Peters (Skeeter)


> Andrew
> -- 
> --------------------------------------------------
> Andrew Michael Cohill, Ph.D.
> Director, Blackburg Electronic Village
> address@hidden    http://www.bev.net/
> 
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