Please don't Cc me on list mail. On Tue, 2002-08-27 at 18:34, Aaron Swartz wrote: > On Tuesday, August 27, 2002, at 02:19 PM, Joe Wreschnig wrote: > >> I think it's clear that graphics fonts and documentation are not > >> software. > > I think it's clear you don't work with fonts or documentation. > > I work with both. I understand these complexities but I didn't really > want to go into them. Sorry, but these complexities are the very things you *must* go into if you want to delineate software and non-software. Proof by generalization is not a valid legal argument, nor do I think it's one that should be used to bypass the social contract. > There are quite a few things (RFCs, the GPL, > etc.) which I think are clearly not intended to be executed by > computers. I don't think arguing about AI and advanced parsing > techniques is relevant to the point at hand. The fact that fonts are described as a set of mathematical equations for splines has nothing to do with AI or advanced parsing techniques. Is a C program that only describes a set of splines not software? Alan Shutko pointed out that I may have been mistaken saying Type1 and PDF are fully Turing-complete, but regardless, they are programs. > > [...] XML (and SGML) are just alternate forms of expressing S-exps, > > used in LISPs [sic] for programming [...] > > So? ASCII is used in C programming. I made this point because it's difficult to prove that "<html><head><title>Foobar</title>...</html>" is not a program, but "(html (head (title "Foobar") ... ) " is. In fact, I'd say it's impossible. > > What about a program that consists solely of printf statements, > > printing > > static text? Is that documentation, or "software"? > > There are more fun puzzles at > http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/ It stops being a fun puzzle and becomes a real problem when Debian packages such programs. Look at the apt-dpkg-ref package. Although "documentation", it's actually a LISP program to output LaTeX source to create a document. So, is it a LISP program, a LaTeX program, or a document? [From your original mail:] > Unless we're using some weird definition of software, I don't see how > one can read this to say everything in Debian must be DFSG-free. I'd > suggest that non-free non-software be allowed in Debian. Am I missing > something? My point is that fine, I guess Debian can include non-free non-software. However, it's difficult if not impossible to prove that any given stream of bits is not software. So the only non-free things we can include are proven non-software, like ham sandwiches or desks. -- - Joe Wreschnig <piman@sacredchao.net> - http://www.sacredchao.net "What I did was justified because I had a policy of my own... It's okay to be different, to not conform to society." -- Chen Kenichi, Iron Chef Chinese
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