firmware is just data. we need to decide our rules for data.
Firmware is just another piece of junk^W^W^W data for me.
Differentiating between different type of data gives you lots of
troubles, for example is a ttf font a program? Is a script a program?
Is an image a program?
IMHO we should apply the same rules to all data shipped on the debian
main cds. I guess there will be little discussion about "derived works".
If derived works are restricted (apart from attribution and the patch
rule) it must go to non-free.
The difficult thing is the requirement of source code.
We should try to find a better description of this rule.
I see two possibilities:
1. "Where source code is the earliest format of data that can be brought
to use using software available in Debian."
Drawback i see: Say an author used $proprietary-font-format to produce a
nice ttf font we want to distribute. As long as there is no DFSG-free
tool to convert this to ttf. But if someone writes such a tool, the font
will suddenly have to go to non-free.
2. "Where 'source code' is a format of the data such that some Debian
developer is capable of modifying, understanding, extending or fixing
its behaviour using this data at a level comparable to the original
author and such modifications must be allowed."
i.e. we must be able to fix bugs or alter the behaviour when needed.
For a font this probably means we can fix broken chars, maybe clone and
add new chars etc. Some developer having an appropriate tool will be
able to do that. Same goes for images.
Greetings,
Erich Schubert
--
erich@(vitavonni.de|debian.org) -- GPG Key ID: 4B3A135C (o_
To understand recursion you first need to understand recursion. //\
Ohne Tränen hat die Seele keinen Regenbogen. V_/_
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