On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 16:26:38 +0000 Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 31, 2006 at 05:00:15PM +0100, Ola Lundqvist wrote:
>
> (Anyone on debian-legal: please note and maintain the Cc:s)
Including the From: field (that is you) and the To: field (that is Ola
Lundqvist)? Let's assume the answer is yes...
[...]
> > The only requirement on the original author (as I can determine) is
> > that you get source code for it, not that it is in preferred form
> > for making modification.
>
> That's perfectly acceptable. Upstream can do whatever they want.
> However, if upstream do not provide the preferred form for
> modification (ie, the unobfuscated version), Debian can not
> distribute it under the terms of the GPL.
Exactly.
>
> That's not an issue in this case, since X is not a GPLed application.
> Debian can distribute the obfuscated code entirely legally, without
> violating any licenses. The issue is whether "source" in the DFSG
> refers to the GPL's definition ("the preferred form for
> modification") or not.
IMHO, DFSG#2 refers to source code, as is usually defined, that is to
say, as in the GNU GPL v2.
> An alternative interpretation could be "a form
> amenable to modification by people sufficiently familiar with the
> work".
I think that this would be too vague a definition.
The term "amenable" could be interpreted in a too broad sense and this
would become a slippery slope: someone sufficiently familiar with a
program could succeed in modifying its binary executable using a hex
editor, but (at least in most cases) he/she would *prefer* to make
modifications to the C code (assuming that the program is actually
written in C).
>
> If people define source as "the preferred form for modifications" in
> all cases, then there's no place for deliberately obfuscated code in
> Debian.
Yeah, and that's a feature, not a bug!!
Deliberately obfuscated code is absolutely against the spirit of Free
Software.
> There's also arguably no place for works that are only
> available as JPEGs, any flattened image formats, mp3s, PDFs and so
> on.
Not necessarily. It depends on which is the "preferred form for
modifications": this can only be determined on a case-by-case basis.
For some works the "preferred form for modifications" may be in JPEG
format (think of photographs taken with a digital camera); for some
other the "preferred form" may be some other format (from which the JPEG
is generated).
Please note that the same situation holds for programmatic works: for
some programs the "preferred form for modifications" may be assembly
code (or even machine code); for some other the "preferred form" may be,
say, C code; for some other it could be a grammar definition (think
about tools that generate C code for a parser of a given grammar: bison
comes to mind).
> Right now there doesn't seem to be a strong opinion in the
> project about that, but I expect it's a discussion that needs to be
> had.
IMO, this discussion desperately needs to be had. I think the right
time to have it is after etch is out.
--
But it is also tradition that times *must* and always
do change, my friend. -- from _Coming to America_
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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