Re: Suggestions of David Nusinow, was: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 08:51:52PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
>
> > Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >> Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> >>
> >>> I find badly written perl approximately as hard to deal with as
> >>> brainfuck. Do you believe that poor quality perl is non-free, or is the
> >>> motive of the author important?
> >>
> >> I think it really depends on situation and context, and it is unlikely
> >> that accidental obfuscation -- like badly written Perl -- will or
> >> should ever keep something out of Debian.
> >
> > So freedom is more based on motivation than practicalities?
>
> Only you have spoken about motivation. I said that it depends on
> situation and context, and that this issue is unlikely to ever matter
> in practice. To be specific, I don't think anybody's ever going to
> point at badly written Perl and claim it's non-free, or point at
> intentionally obfuscated code in any language and claim it's free.
>
> There's a related issue that we see all the time (about once a year,
> I'd guess), regarding whether "preferred form for modification" takes
> non-existence into account. The general, but weak, consensus seems to
But for some type of code, and hex editor is the preferred form of
modification. That is hardly none. and the class of code covered, altough
small, is not empty. I imagine that hand written machine language forreally
old computers of the pre-compiler days, or some small chips, as well as things
like boot sectors or various prom thingies enter in that category.
Or if you look at code written by a low-level fanatic, who believe machine
code is the only right tru way. It is not non-free because of that, but
naturally you are free to do a C or whatever reimplementation.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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