Re: Free Art License

[Joe Wreschnig <piman@sacredchao.net>]

On Wed, 2004-09-29 at 22:27, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 11:24:47PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> > >The source is defined as "The source code for a work means the 
> > >preferred
> > >form of the work for making modifications to it."
> > >
> > >It's not always clear what the preferred form of modification would be
> > >for a piece of media. [...]
> > 
> > So specify it.
> 
> That's a very bad idea; it'd merely be *his* preferred form, and the GPL
> doesn't say "the original author's preferred form of the work for making
> modifications to it".
> 
> It's not acceptable to say "the preferred form for modifying this program
> is the C code", and likewise it's not acceptable to say "the preferred form
> for modifying this audio clip is the MIDI data" or "for modifying this image
> is the PSD", for pretty much the same reasons.  The GPL allows me to take
> the program/audio/image and treat any form as source, as long as it really
> is my preferred form for modification.  I can distribute assembly code as
> source, even if I received it as C code, if I really did compile it to
> assembly and then made my modifications to the assembly.
> 
> People should not be trying to attach a specific "this is the preferred
> form", since it raises questions about what they really mean--if they're
> saying that others must always use that source form, it's not the GPL
> anymore, and DFSG-unfree as it limits modification; if they're merely
> saying what their own source is, it's irrelevant.

How do you feel about specifying what is *not* the preferred form of
modification ("object code", in GPL parlance)?

I've a number of documents that say "References to "object code" and
"executables" in the GNU GPL are to be interpreted as the output of any
document formatting or typesetting system, including intermediate and
printed output." Some of them I've written, but I borrowed the wording
from something else (I suspect in Debian), and I've encouraged people to
use this phrasing many times since.
-- 
Joe Wreschnig <piman@sacredchao.net>