Re: Suggestions of David Nusinow, was: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:

> On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 08:51:52PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
>> Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
>> 
>> > Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>> >> Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
>> >>
>> >>> I find badly written perl approximately as hard to deal with as
>> >>> brainfuck. Do you believe that poor quality perl is non-free, or is the
>> >>> motive of the author important?
>> >> 
>> >> I think it really depends on situation and context, and it is unlikely
>> >> that accidental obfuscation -- like badly written Perl -- will or
>> >> should ever keep something out of Debian.
>> >
>> > So freedom is more based on motivation than practicalities?
>> 
>> Only you have spoken about motivation.  I said that it depends on
>> situation and context, and that this issue is unlikely to ever matter
>> in practice.  To be specific, I don't think anybody's ever going to
>> point at badly written Perl and claim it's non-free, or point at
>> intentionally obfuscated code in any language and claim it's free.
>> 
>> There's a related issue that we see all the time (about once a year,
>> I'd guess), regarding whether "preferred form for modification" takes
>> non-existence into account.  The general, but weak, consensus seems to
>
> But for some type of code, and hex editor is the preferred form of
> modification. That is hardly none. and the class of code covered, altough
> small, is not empty. I imagine that hand written machine language forreally
> old computers of the pre-compiler days, or some small chips, as well as things
> like boot sectors or various prom thingies enter in that category.

Well, yes -- sometimes, like for some firmware, raw machine code *is*
the preferred form for modification.

> Or if you look at code written by a low-level fanatic, who believe machine
> code is the only right tru way. It is not non-free because of that, but
> naturally you are free to do a C or whatever reimplementation.

As I said, context and situation matter.  I do not think Matthew
Garrett's attempts to create a decidable rule will succeed.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu