On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 04:01:54AM +0200, Joachim Breitner wrote: > Am Fre, 2003-06-13 um 02.10 schrieb Andrew Suffield: > > As such, I > > think it'd be best to remove the second one outright; the freedom is > > already adequetely described by the first. *Any* form which allows you > > to modify the work for any purpose, is good enough. > > Not sure: Technically, for example, you can modify a program in any > possible way just by having access to the assembler code that the > compiler generates out of the closed sources, but this would be far too > difficult to be realistic. That is why specifically the "preferred form" > has to be available. But a clearer definition would be great, of course. Suppose the author is one of those nutcases that *likes* writing assembly code. Under a requirement such as you describe, all the code he wrote would be non-free, since nobody else wants to work in that form. If you try and "clarify" enough to make this case free, you find yourself with a null statement. Now, let's take it one step further. I postulate that there are numerous packages in the archive which are so poorly written, that modifying them for a range of useful purposes (including fixing some bugs), is too difficult to be realistic; assume this is true for a moment. Are they therefore to be considered non-free? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing, `. `' | Imperial College, `- -><- | London, UK
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