Re: Let's stop feeding the NVidia cuckoo
On Sun, Feb 27, 2005 at 10:50:13AM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote:
> * Justin Pryzby (justinpryzby@users.sourceforge.net) [050225 22:35]:
> > On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 04:23:07PM -0500, David Nusinow wrote:
> > > I'll see about taking a closer look at parts to see if it actually
> > > makes sense, but so far it looks fine to me. As it is, I don't see
> > > any difference between this and any other vendor not releasing
> > > hardware specs and yet a Free driver exists. Not a good thing, but
> > > not non-free either.
>
> > Well put. I think it is arguably not "source code", however, if the
> > source we are seeing is the result of some sed-like script which
> > converts a sort of custom #defined MAGIC_NUMBERs to id numbers, and
> > then removes the #definitions.
>
> Is there some proof that the files are created that way, or is this just
> your assumptation?
Not even an assumption, it was just a hypothetical wandering of my
mind (as Don Armstrong said). I was still arguing with myself whether
closed-specification was conflicting with open source software. My
conclusion: it may be.
I was thinking "if I were to sit down right now and right a opened
driver while actively withholding device details, how would I do it",
and the conclusion was that I would have to actively obfuscate the
code (make it less easy to modify), and would be possible with a bit
of cpp or sed magic.
Justin
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