Re: Minified files and source code requirement
On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 19:08:14 +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sun, 23 Oct 2011, Paul Wise wrote:
> > One of the other problems with embedded JavaScript libraries is that
> > often only the pre-compiled/obfuscated/minified version is
> > distributed, which would be a violation of DFSG item 2.
>
> I did not reply on this at first but since Jakub filed #646729 using
> a similar reasoning, I would like to discuss this here.
>
> I don't agree that minified files are a violation of DFSG #2. If the
> library is under the GPL then it would be a problem because it's not the
> preferred form of modification.
>
Just because it's not GPL doesn't mean DFSG can be ignored.
> But with more liberal licenses, we should certainly accept that the
> minified files are their own sources much like we accept any other blob of
> data under a free license. For instance we know that almost none of the
We... don't?
> firmwares are hand-crafted yet I think we have many firmware under
> DFSG-free licenses (and we adequately pointed out that GPL firmwares were
> not ok).
And we ship that non-GPL, sourceless firmware in non-free.
> (Furthermore there are tools which can reindent such minified files, while
> this doesn't restore variable names and the like, it really helps if one
> wants to analyze this code.)
>
Just like there's disassemblers for ELF. That doesn't make ELF files
source.
Cheers,
Julien
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