Comment by svat

Well, I'm not so sure… we computer people care about integrity checksums, bit-for-bit copies, lossless compression, version control, and the like. (Copies not differing even to the slightest extent more or less distinguishes digital from analog copies.) But it is not clear that this is something everyone cares about, or should. An equally viable attitude is that an author has some ideas which are the “actual” thing, and the words in which they are expressed are somewhat incidental. From this perspective, making changes to render the text less distracting is not tampering with the integrity of what actually matters (the ideas), just removing irrelevant obstacles that prevent the ideas from spreading.

In fact, if you look around to find out who made this transcription (and the minor edits), it turns out this page is a copy from a Geocities website that is now preserved at https://www.oocities.org/toritrust/ and https://www.geocities.ws/toritrust/ — it says “This Web site contains the words of Dr. Jack R. Gibb, and is respectfully dedicated to his memory and to his work” and even carries some unpublished work from him, so it is clearly interested in spreading his ideas, and many of the (minor) changes seem indeed in that spirit. Also it was maintained by Donald Skiff, which matches the "des" signature in:

> Edited only to reduce gender-specific references. des

The OP page (from the submission here) has now a disclaimer at the top saying “I provide this HTML version of a historical article because it was not easily available […] I am not responsible for the transcription or edits otherwise” — no doubt added a result of the discussion on this HN post. It is unfortunate that the carping on this thread (some comment was even trying to use his interests to ascribe motivations to him, assuming he made the edits) has wasted someone's time like this.

Anyway I bought a used copy of the Trust book (1991 edition; the older edition doesn't have this article attached), and will update the gist or add a comment on it comparing the book's version with the webpage's.