Re: Let's stop feeding the NVidia cuckoo

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

Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 10:16:46AM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:

> Yes, it's odd, but it's odd in the opposite direction to the one
> you're coming at it from. The unexpected thing is that the binary, or
> jpeg, can *ever* be considered free. Conversely, any argument which
> says jpegs are always free enough, also says the same thing about
> program binaries. There's nothing special about pictures here.

In the general case, a binary is insufficient - it's too complex for
someone to be able to modify it in any way they want to. In the general
case, a JPEG is modifiable in a way that a binary is not.

Programs exist that allow you to read in JPEGs and produce new pieces of
artwork. People use them on a regular basis. No comparable programs
exist for ELF binaries. The obvious conclusion is that derived works can
(in general) be produced from JPEGs, but (in general) not from ELF
files.

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