Re: Defining 'preferred form for making modifications'
Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> writes:
> > In such a case, the layered format is the preferred form,
>
> Perhaps for you. Not for everybody.
No, for everybody: for the simple reason that if you have distributed
that, then the "raw pixels of the gif" are still accessible and can be
edited. I wish I had said this the first time round.
> > for the simple reason that if you have distributed that, then the
> > "raw pixels of the gif" are still accessible and can be edited,
>
> But if they are not the preferred form, it is illegal to edit them (at
> least, it it illegal to distribute the edited gifs). So what's the
> point of being *able* to do so?
What? Who on earth said it was illegal to edit things other than the
preferred form? Nothing in the GPL says that, but the fact that you
have edited them means that you consider them, for the purpose of that
edit, to be preferred.
> > Again, I'm not sure what I think about this question with respect to
> > free software in general. But in the case of the GPL, the answer is
> > easy: don't drop the xcf files from the distribution, period.
>
> What would that help? The xcf files are no longer the source of the
> gifs that are distributed. They may be source of something else, but
> the GPL has never required that you distribute any source but the one
> for the binaries you distribute.
The source in this case *IS* the xcf files, and the modified gifs.
The reason is quite clear: because otherwise one could very trivially
escape the GPL's requirements entirely, by making some little
modification directly to the binary for some program, and then
claiming that the binary is, ipso facto, the preferred form.
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