On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 03:11:36AM +0200, Erich Schubert wrote:
> 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.
If something can become non-free because someone writes a free editor to
edit it, I do not think it was free in the first place.
> 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.
The ability to fix bugs is in no way a good measure to see whether you
have source. With the right knowledge, one can fix bugs with a
disassembler and the binary of a program; that doesn't mean the source
is available.
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