On 04 Mar 2005 10:07:20 -0500 Michael Poole wrote:
> Matthew Garrett writes:
[...]
> > Why does it depend on what the upstream author is using as source?
> > How does that affect the recipient's ability to modify the work?
>
> One of the underpinnings of the Free Software movement is that users
> of software should not be made second-class citizens when it comes to
> altering the software. This is what drives the desire to have
> "sufficiently modifiable" source, and it is neatly more objective than
> a metric of "sufficient modifiability."
>
> Users should have the same opportunities to modify software as its
> original author(s) have. If the original author had to pay for a
> non-free tool, or had to study some advanced topic for years to grok
> the algorithims, so be it. If the original author uses C source, it
> violates Free Software's principles to expect others to edit the
> preprocessor or compiler output to modify the software.
Indeed.
--
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
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