On Thursday, Jun 12, 2003, at 22:01 US/Eastern, Joachim Breitner wrote:
Not sure: Technically, for example, you can modify a program in any possible way just by having access to the assembler code that the compiler generates out of the closed sources, but this would be far too difficult to be realistic.
We need to consider that some works were written in machine code using a hex editor. For example, I believe Tom Pitman originally coded CompileIt! in a hex editor.
I think what we're going at is that its not free to make it hard to modify something by withholding certain forms of it. If I distribute a postscript file and withhold the Τεχ[0] source I generated it from, that's not free. If I write my document in PostScript, and distribute that[1], that is free.
I think preferred form is thus very much the right term. However, it has to be the preferred form of the last major author. I say "of the last major author" because I think its free if someone takes my hand-crafted LaTeX, imports it to Lyx, considerably modifies it there, and then distributes the .lyx file. I think it's free if he runs dvips on it and considerably edits the generated PostScript, and distributes that. I don't think it's free if he just changes one word.
[0] That's tau epsilon chi for the Unicode challenged. [1] Assuming all the other criteria are met.