Re: Proposal - Deferment of Changes from GR 2004-003

[tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)]

Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com> writes:

> The question is: is software meaning "any turing-machine-derivated data",
> or "binary code executed on the machine where Debian is installed" ?

No, the question is: "if I were to modify these bits, could I change
how my computer works?"  And the answer is, of course, yes.

And so the question is "why can I not modify these bits?"  and the
answer is: the author refuses to permit me access to the source and
restricts my copying of the bits.

Now, why does the company not release the source?  Easy: they want to
keep secret how the hardware works.  And then you reward them, by
saying that since the hardware's construction is seekrit, I should not
care about my inability to constructively modify the firmware.

To tell me that I must be a special expert to modify them misses the
point.  You must be a special expert to modify any program; one of the
geniuses of free software is that if I am not an expert I could hire
one.

Thomas