Re: Let's stop feeding the NVidia cuckoo
Joel Aelwyn <fenton@debian.org> writes:
> On Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 05:08:36PM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>> In my eye even _deliberate_ obfuscation (which remains to be proven)
>> does not violate the letter of DFSG#2 while it does not follow its
>> spirit. There are other sources in Debian that are far more unreadbale
>> or even compiler output (e.g. pascal to c compiler output). Sometimes
>> it is either that or no package at all. And is that in the users
>> interest?
>
> What a wonderful reason to treat them as guidelines instead of defintions;
> then we can talk meaningfully about whether it violates the spirit, even
> while obeying the letter.
>
> Oh wait...
> --
> Joel Aelwyn <fenton@debian.org> ,''`.
Maybe I'm too unclear. They are guidelines. As such they don't define
what source is or what forms of 'source' are acceptable but use the
broadest term saying just 'source'. If something is still acceptable
as source (like having source without #define's) or not (like having a
plain gcc -S output) has to be decided case by case.
Just saying obfuscating violates DFSG#2 doesn't cut it in my
opinion. That is far to broad a generalization to be usefull at
all. Say the upstream author has personal references to NDA protected
materials (e.g. "/* see page 17 of foobar */") in his source and has
to remove them before release. Why would that make the source
unacceptable?
Having somewhat obfuscated source violates the spirit of free software
and up to some level that can be tolerated. As long as the software
comes under a free license (and follows it) and the maintainer is
happy working with the source in the form it is in why should anyone
object? The world isn't black&white but has shades of grey.
Is that clearer?
MfG
Goswin
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