On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 02:47:58PM +0200, Thomas Hood wrote: > Objection #1: The license must not force the licensee to keep around > old crufty versions of the source. > Answer: Using my definition, it doesn't. The licensee is only required > to provide the most informative form at his disposal. Does this mean > that he can destroy his source files and then not distribute source? I really don't think that the form that contains the *most* information is necessarily the best, because this prevents someone from improving the source by removing *extraneous* information. If two forms of source code compile to give identical binaries, which form contains more information -- the one with pointless comments and more KLOCs, or the one that's more concise and easier to read? > Yes; but that isn't a problem: if the source has really been > destroyed, then no license will bring it back; and we don't want to > punish people for losing their source files; and we don't want to > rule out the distribution of binaries for which the sources have > disappeared. On the contrary, I *do* want to prevent people from claiming such a sourceless program is free software. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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