Re: Let's stop feeding the NVidia cuckoo

[Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org> wrote:
> Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
>> If we actually upheld this standard at present, it would result in us
>> removing a large number of packages from Debian.
> 
> Which packages?  Without specific examples it's difficult to discuss
> this point.  In fact this claim is made frequently ("Oh, but that would
> mean we'd have to remove hundreds of packages!") -- and often it turns
> out to be wrong.

nautilus, xplanet, gnome-games, eterm, gimp, gtkhtml, enlightenment,
python-gtk, the mod-perl documentation, apache and openoffice are the
ones installed here. Some number of them could just have the artwork
removed. Of course, a large number of the pngs on systems would
originally have been produced in something like the Gimp. Flattening
them to pngs will have lost information, and it's possible that the
original files still exist somewhere. If we're actually concerned, we
need to contact everyone who produced a png that's present in the
distribution and find out whether they still have original source files
anywhere.

Or, alternatively, we could accept that pngs are modifiable enough.

>> However, even
>> ignoring that, I think your definition leads to some strangeness. It
>> suggests that a JPEG is DFSG-free in and of itself in some cases, but
>> that the existence of a lossless representation of that picture
>> renders the JPEG non-free unless it's distributed with that lossless
>> representation.
> 
> No, it doesn't.  The lone JPEG is only non-free if the lossless version
> is what the original author would use to make a modification to the
> JPEG.  If, for example, the original author threw out the lossless
> version immediately on making the JPEG, that's strong evidence it's not
> needed.

What does the original author's intent have to do with it? Can I take
the original author's JPEG, modify it and then distribute my modified
JPEG in debian? Or does the fact that the author has a "better" version
mean that my JPEG was unmodifiable?

>> but I think that
>> the GPL's definition is stricter than we should require in general. We
>> don't have the DFSG because they provide philosophical freedoms - we
>> have the DFSG because they allow people to engage in practical
>> activities. If a piece of software allows someone to assert their
>> freedom to perform those acts without onerous restrictions, then it
>> ought to be free from a DFSG standpoint.
> 
> Speak for yourself.  One of the things that makes d-l so combustible* is
> that different people have lots of different opinions on why we need the
> DFSG and how we should use them.

Why do you believe we require source code? Is it so that people can
modify software, or is it to obtain some sort of philosophical purity?

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org