While I can see that in theory a specification might in some cases be a derivative work of an existing specification for the same API, it cannot be the case that all re-specifications are. APIs themselves are (probably) not copyrightable;* therefore it must be possible to document them in some way that does not infringe upon the copyright of existing documentation for them.

(* AIUI (usual provisos apply), the Google/Oracle case on this subject was resolved by the court saying that, even if the API is copyrightable (which was not decided affirmatively), a clean re-implementation of it such as Google’s would be fair use.)

In any case, as long as SRFI text is MIT licensed (a curious choice for documentation to begin with, but we can live with it), this is a bit of an academic point.

> On 9 Dec 2023, at 18:35, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If I describe the rules of a game in my own words, it is not a derivative work of the original specification of the game's rules, is it?
>
> Assuming that no sentence was copied verbatim, the section [1] of the Guile Manual is not the derivative work of any RnRS, is it?
>
> --
>
> [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/guile.html#Definition
>
> Am Sa., 9. Dez. 2023 um 18:28 Uhr schrieb John Cowan <xxxxxx@ccil.org>:
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 9, 2023 at 5:26 AM Daphne Preston-Kendal <xxxxxx@nonceword.org> wrote:
>
> I’m less concerned about this as there are various solutions (including simply rewriting the specification text for any adopted procedures/syntax/etc.) we can adopt.
>
> Actually that doesn't work either, because you can't prepare a clean-room *specification* unless you have a specification for the specification, which pretty much is a specification.  So your supposedly clean specification ends up being a derivative work of the original specification.
>
> It's annoying that the Scheme specifications are not (recognized as) libre, but there are worse things: gcc is libre software, but the various C specifications are neither libre nor even available gratis.