Re: Let's stop feeding the NVidia cuckoo
On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 03:25:48PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 12:02:50PM -0800, Ben Johnson wrote:
> > Although the DFSG do not envisage the issue, the GPL
> > does tackle it: "The source code for a work means the
> > preferred form of the work for making modifications to
> > it". I am aware the DFSG !== the GPL, nevertheless the
> > GPL is obviously as good a definition of free software
> > as any, and whichever your sensibility, open-source or
>
> Obfuscated C code is obviously not source, by any sensible definition--
> any "definition" of the word "source code" that results in obfuscated
> C code being called "source" is wrong. Since the GPL's definition
> of "source" is reasonable (in fact, it's one of the only robust
> definitions of the word that I'm aware of), it handles this.
>
> Obfuscated code does not satisfy DFSG#2. I hope nobody seriously
> disagrees with this.
Let's not be so fast with this. I haven't taken a look at the driver source
yet, but I think there's a big difference between obfuscating the source to
your driver and not providing specs to your hardware. It seems, from reading
Mike's mail, that the latter is more the case than the former. I'm not sure how
I feel about that with respect to the DFSG, but since the hardware is not
something that Debian distributes I'm currently leaning towards having it not
affect the Freeness of the driver.
- David Nusinow
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