Re: Obfuscated source
On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 06:05:58PM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote:
> * Bruce Perens (bruce@perens.com) [041212 17:50]:
> > Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> >
> > >Imagine a source where all variables are named v<number> and all
> > >functions f<number>. Is that still free? Where do we draw the line?
> > >When does source stop to be bad style and start to become obfuscated
> > >and unacceptable for main?
> > >
> > >
> > This has been handled before. Some people strip all comments and
> > unnecessary white space, and make all symbol names meaningless numbers.
> > In general it's done by a program, and they don't actually use that
> > version of the code for their own work. Thus, it's not the preferred
> > source code under the GPL.
>
> "preferred form for modification" is _only_ a GPL-term and not part of
> the SC.
You can keep saying that all you want, but it remains the most commonly
used and most functional definition for "source code" available, and I
fail to see the motive behind objecting to its use as a metric for
determining whether something is source. (For example, it clearly comes
to the correct answer above, in the case of machine-obfuscated code.)
--
Glenn Maynard
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