On Wed, 2002-06-12 at 20:54, Walter Landry wrote:
> The GPL already has a means for dealing with things like this. If you
> distribute executables, you are required to distribute everything to
> make that executable except for what is normally found with the OS.
> If you can't, because you're not allowed to distribute Pagemaker,
> you're breaking the license. This situation comes up frequently on
> this list.
(Replying a second time because I just thought of a great example.)
Requiring the original source for documents is like requiring XCFs for
e.g. all the GNOME icons. I'm sure they're all stored as XCF's
originally, not PNGs. Yet no one complains, because PNG is an open
format, editable with free tools. But by the logic you're applying to
documentation licenses, all such images are non-free (and in fact
illegal! Since we can't distribute the XCFs at all).
PNG, XCF, JPG, BMP, whatever. They're all open, and Debian distributes
all of them, regardless of the original format of the images. Yet for
some reason when someone wants to convert a LaTeX document to HTML, or
some other equally common transformation, the resulting material is put
in non-free. Why is this?
No, I don't want to see all documentation in PDF or .doc files any more
than I want to see all my images in GIF or some other proprietary
format. But when you have equivalent open formats, to constantly require
the use of (or require the party to provide) the original format, is
madness.
The concept of "source" does not apply easily to documents, but
somewhere there's a good middle ground between "always the original
format" and "any format".
--
- Joe Wreschnig <piman@sacredchao.net> - http://www.sacredchao.net
"What I did was justified because I had a policy of my own... It's
okay to be different, to not conform to society."
-- Chen Kenichi, Iron Chef Chinese
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part